Other than lots of shouting, this film is basically a collective remake of all the rundown sports dramas that have released in Bollywood in recent years.

Adi (Madhavan) is a reckless boxing coach who has an ugly track record of his personal boxing career, which has rendered him tasteless in his sport's fraternity. So, when he bumps into a petite fisher-woman named Madhi (Singh) who also happens to be a better, streetwise boxer than her elder sister Lux who is a professional boxer, Adi quickly sees the world in her and starts training her for the World Championship. After a series of ON-OFF story manoeuvrings through plain bureaucracy, poverty, jealousy, hotheadedness, and sheer madness, Madhi dots the i's and crosses the t's, puts on her gloves, and shoes what she's really worth, as a normal human can so obviously predict.

The biggest problem with the film is that the story is so predictable the trailer is enough to understand the plot. A poor girl - coach with a bad history - training - drama - politics - training - streak of romance - inspirational theme song - inspirational montage - success - is what all sports drama intrinsically talk about. And Saala Khadoos is no different.

Talking about performances, Madhavan wins the shouting competition, while Miss Singh comes in second. He gives a good performance, though, unlike the newcomer. Hussain is fine, too. Overall, the cast do a good job as they have been directed well. So the whole blame is on the lousy script which is too commonplace to fall in that "based on true stories" realm.

BOTTOM LINE: Saala Khadoos is a stale boxing drama that has been made rather lazily maybe because halfway through even the makers realized that what they were making is below average. Better than Mastizaade, though.

GRADE: D-

Can be watched with a typical Indian family? YES