With this film, if one goes to watch it with an open mind when we consider all the recent offerings from the Deols since “Gadar-Ek Prem Katha,” Deol breaks the barrier from dated to contemporary effortlessly — and very effectively. After all, from the ‘80s onwards, we could call him the original He-Man!

“Saala Khadoos” has all the ‘givens’ in a sports film—it has the usual story of the triumph of the underdog thanks to an impassioned coach, spotlights sports politics, defeat, humiliation, demoralization and finally the triumph of not only merit over politics, but also the protagonist and the teacher.

The film is thus made a one-time watch simply to revisit SRK-Kajol, experience breathtaking locations spiced up with VFX and watch an even more colorful (thanks to budgets) world than normal of Shetty’s cars and his version of Goa.

“Bajirao Mastani” is a great one-time big-screen watch. A crisper edit and stronger content in the second half could have made this one a classic.

The wait has been long — both for a Sooraj Barjatya film (nine years) and a Sooraj-Salman collaboration (16 years). The wait has indeed been worth it, and Barjatya can well relax, for he has managed to connect in times when the positive values he likes to project in his movies are considered laughably archaic.

As a film, it works overall despite the flawed screenplay and the overdone gimmicks like animation, excessive VFX and DI and what-have-you. Somewhere in the confusion, director Vikas Bahl, the man who made two landmark films, “Chillar Party” (with a co-director) and “Queen,” wants to tell a different story in a tried-and-tested genre and ends up telling it decently.