Torbaaz – Poor execution hurts Noble intentions

Sanjay Dutt’s latest outing Torbaaz is now streaming on Netflix. Directed by Girish Malik, Torbaaz is story of a Doctor who goes to war torn Afghanistan and tries to bring a hope to people by engaging the kids to sports instead of picking up weapons and suicide bombing.

Plot

Dr Naseer Khan (Sanjay Dutt), an ex army doctor, had lost his wife and his son in a suicide blast in afghanistan 5 years back, and now he returns back to Afghanistan, for helping an NGO setup for refugees.

Khan, who is devastated with the loss of his family, finds a purpose in life when he sees young children in refugee camps, ready to pick up weapons and fighting with each other. He decides to ensure that those children get a better life and not get dragged into terrorism.

He starts a training camp for cricket for the refugee children when he notices love for cricket in children. Khan takes those children to a cricket academy where the coach refuses to teach them, stating that the refugee children can at best become suicide bombers.

Dutt takes this as a challenge and dares the coach for a match between his students and refugee children. He with help of Ayesha (Nargis Fakhri) ensures that the match has got tight security and even media coverage.

Alongside this, Torbaaz has a terrorist Qazar (Rahul Dev), who uses these young kids as suicide bombers for Jehad. Khan negotiates with him and asks him to let the children play a match which he agrees to.

Rest of the film shows the training for kids for that match and then the match itself. Will ge be able to guide his team of refugee kids named Torbaaz to victory, or will the club team will beat them. Also will Qazar leave the kids to have a better future or will keep using them as weapons.

The Hits

The plot of Torbaaz is good enough for making an emotional film on victory of hope and love over terrorism.

The film looks beautiful in the way it is shot, with nice locations and production values are good. Dutt looks handsome and sincere though thats the only good thing about the film.

The Misses

Torbaaz is good in its intention but has a very poor execution which robs it of achieving what it aspires to. The movie looks more of a mashup of few movies and lacks originality.

Direction by Girish Malik is poor and leaves a lot of scope for improvement. Characters are poorly developed because of which we don’t feel for any of the characters, which is a must for a movie of this genre. 

The performances are poor (barring an almost decent Dutt), and lack of a capable supporting actor, and known faces in the cast harms the film.

Performances

Torbaaz has Sanjay Dutt in lead and he does a decent job as a devastated yet hopeful Dr Khan, but unfortunately he is the only decent known performer in this film. 

Nargis as Ayesha wears a weird accent (in addition to her already weird one) and disappoints big time in a small role, so does every other supporting artist.

The child actor playing Baaz is decent and is the only good performer from the kids. Rahul Dev as Qazar is repetitive as he has done similar roles hundreds of times and sleepwalks.

FFC Take

All in all, Torbaaz is a noble idea, which has turned out to be a not so good movie. It lacks emotions, depth and performances.

The movie, to be fair, gives a nice message of harmony and anti terrorism, but given the not so good execution, it will be tough for that message to get to the audiences.

Torbaaz, even with its noble intentions, is a very weak movie and is better avoided.