Lagaan

The most popular game in India is cricket. This game is always rocking people every time. And the same game took Indian movie Lagaan to the Oscar finals. Lagaan is based on the cricket game. And this movie is set in the time before Indian independence. Director Ashutosh Gowarikar who has worked nearly 6 years on this subject finally found tremendous success.


Lagaan means tax. Villagers in the time of British period suffered with heavy taxes. This is the main concept for this movie. And the movie starts in an Indian village where people are struggling due to lack of proper rains and fail to pay the tax in time.


Villagers request the British officer Russell (Paul Blackthorne) to lower the taxes and give some time to clear the taxes. But he rejects and asks them to go and watch the cricket match played by their British People.

Bhuvan(Aamir Khan) is an intelligent and brave boy in the village who criticises cricket. He also adds there is nothing new compared with the local Indian game Gilli-Danda. British officers challenge Bhuvan to play a match with them.



If they lose the match they will cancel taxes for the next three years. If they win it means the villagers have to pay triple tax. Bhuvan agrees to the challenge. With the help of a British girl Elizabeth (Rachel Shelly) he prepares his team.

This lengthy movie received nearly 30 awards in India and International film festivals. A.R.Rahman gave the music and Anil Mehta did the camera work according to the period which is brilliant. Gracy Singh played the female lead in this movie.

Victory

Victory is a cricket based movie. Nearly forty members of real cricketers including the Indian team's present players Harbajan Singh, R.P. Singh and Yusuf Pathan appeared in this movie as a cricketers. It is a one of costliest movies made. It moves with different back drops like Australia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Mumbai, Jaisalmeer according to the story. Debutant director Ajit Pal Mangat directed Victory and produced it too.


The story is about a young cricketer named Vijay (Harman Baweja) son of Ram Shekawat (Anupam Kher). Ram dreams of his son to becoming a great cricketer. Nandu (Amrita Rao), Vijay's childhood friend encourages him always. With his dedication and hard work he gets the place in the Indian cricket team. But after entering into the team he attracted toward having fun. Selectors remove him from the team for his poor performance.
He realises himself and identifies the difference in news about him in the media and the people. He undergoes a major operation for his back. He flies to Australia with Nandu for the operation while on that trip he starts liking Nandu. But she is not in a stage to believe him.

He returns back to India and starts practice and again regains the place in India team. At the end worrying about his injury he plays the match and wins the trophy. But when he returns home he finds that his father dead. At last Nandu meets him.


Director took cricket, the most famous game in India as his subject. He failed to show this most successful formula. Harman Baweja bagged another disaster after Love Story 2050 with Priyanka Chopra. He must wait for his next film Ashutosh Gowariker's Whats Your Rashee?.
As Vijay's father, Anupam Kher is good and Amrita also performed her character well. Anu Malik's music is very good in this movie, creating a real cricket match feel. We must appreciate the camerawork from the four guys Sanjay F Gupta, Attar Singh Saini, Gopal Shah and Vikas Sivaraman.