Paan Singh Tomar

Paan Singh Tomar joins the army. He is reported for eating too much, and his officer shows him a way out: become an athlete and you can eat as much as you like. He starts running. He becomes national champion in the steeplechase and breaks the record; for years he represents the army. He retires and goes back to his village. There is a fight over land there; his relatives have taken his fields and his mother has been beaten. He goes to the police, goes to court, and gets nowhere. In the end he arms himself, goes into the Chambal ravines and forms a gang. Tigmanshu Dhulia directs. Irrfan Khan plays Paan Singh; Mahie Gill and Nawazuddin Siddiqui are in the cast. The narrative rests on a real man; Paan Singh Tomar was known both as a national athlete and as a bandit in the region. Irrfan Khan won the national award for best actor in India for the part. The matter it works at is the absence of the state; the narrative shows plainly that it was bureaucracy that put the gun in his hands. The story is built around an interview with a journalist and the past opens from there. Banditry in the Chambal region was a real social problem for a long time and the film does not romanticise it. It went long without distribution and was released late; then it succeeded unexpectedly. Who it is for: viewers who like Indian drama based on real events and Irrfan Khan. Who it is not for: the register is heavy, the violence explicit, and the ending without hope.