Harsha Raj Gatty

StoryInfinity for Daijiworld

Mangaluru, Aug 17: Frankly to me it looked as a 'period' prequel to Chak-De India, with similar overtone of patriotism, an underdog and a divided hockey team, ego clash of centre forward players, doubtful sponsors of the team - all ‘Gold’ in short was a penalty shootout.

I apologize for being comparative but to cut the chase short, if you are looking for a tight knit sports drama like Chak-De India, then Gold may not be your thing, but if you are still overzealous of reigniting your patriotic sentiment of August 15, this movie barely helps to keep up that sentiment.

It is strongly felt that India bagging gold medal against the British post independence - one would expect the subjects to be handled a bit maturely especially when a team of popular production house and star cast is working around it.

But alas, as far as Gold is concerned - right from the beginning, one could feel the mechanical action and reaction from the actors. Set in the backdrop of India's partition, be it their symbolic gesture of patriotism or dialogue delivery, there is so much superficial, impassioned flow of performance starting right from Kunal Kapoor. It is like they had not attended the pre-shoot workshop they have these days for actors before the filming begins, hence they could not get the hang of their character.

Then you have these abrupt cuts and portrayal of 'silliness' or comedy that forcibly try to make you laugh, but end up drawing a smirk from the audience.

Indeed Akshay Kumar has relatively taken a backseat in terms of the significance of his role to the plot's climax, but the story unnecessarily revolved around his personal life to draw a romantic angle instead of giving a buildup to the game. On the contrary - post interval the script to make up for the lost time rushes to show the uninspiring team building of the players, which ends up making a mockery of them.

Akshay Kumar character sketch is somewhere between Devdas from the movie Devdas, Happy Singh from Singh is King and sometimes Krishnaji of Chakde India. The otherwise Bengali character suddenly develops a perfect UP accent when the film calls for a song sequence.

Unfortunately the film under uses the promising performance of Mouni Roy, Amit Sadh, Vineet Kumar Singh, Sunny Kaushal and British actor Andrew Hevill.

Watching this film, I could feel the nostalgic, face-cringing expression similar to that I had while watching shallow and jingoistic narrative of 'Paramanu'.

Overall I would rate the movie 4.5/10.