I watched a Paid-Preview of Bhaag Milkha Bhaag last night and I was star-strucked by its fame watching the house-full crowd in the theater (as if it is the first day of the release). When I first watched its teaser in October last year and first trailer in January..it had me going since then, and now I am happy that my expectation was worth it.

BRIEF STORY & REVIEW SKETCH.

The film is about Milkha Singh and introspects his being through the eyes of Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra. There are no twists or turns in the movie but its just a tale told on a clean slate. Film starts with a defeat in Olympics, carried on when Milkha refuses to visit Pakistan (has his valid reasons for doing so) but Pt. Nehru sends Milkha's latter and former coach to Chandigarh so that they can convince him for the tour. During the train-journey, Pavan Malhotra (former coach) reveals the story of Milkha Singh and his reason to not visit Pakistan to the other two gentlemen which unleashes an assiduous, interesting and penultimate story about the legend. This Sikh has been running his whole life, starting his first race for a glass of milk to the Olympics..and never ending. It reminds me of the great metaphor ' The race of Life'. Milkha Singh ran to save his life, to eat, to dream, for love, for country, for passion and to overcome his own personal fears, ''and what a run it was!''. BMB traces his scarred childhood, brutalized by India's partition ; followed by penury and petty crimes. He finds the purpose of life when he falls for Beeru (Sonam). Joins the Indian Army and since then his passion, eagerness and situations along with the efforts (negative & positive both) made by different people led him to become an athlete, a runner who remained uncased even by his own daemons. He keeps on breaking records but witnesses a heartbreaking defeat in Rome Olympics (1960) but thats not it, he takes it in his stride, overcomes his catastrophic past which was the cause of Olympic defeat and emerges out to be a clear winner.

OVERVIEW

ROPM delivers yet again a tale in his own style (fond of changing tones in his films), where the length is bit of a disappointment otherwise the content heals the flaw with a superb execution and sticky pace, that tops with Farhan Akhtar's outstanding performance (the actor gave his blood n sweat into the character) and he emerges out to be the soul of the movie physically and mentally. The story by Prasoon Joshi is admirable and the track 'Zinda' is well written by him, beautifully composed by Shankar, Ehsaan, Loy and descriptively choreographed by Shaimak Davar. The background score by the trio adds on to the whole movie. The performances from the other cast is noticeable where Divya Dutta deserves a special mention (Hats off to the lady for creating a great impact in spite of having such a small role) The film truly deserves to be one of the best that Bollywood has offered this year so far and I hope to see some more in-depth biopics like this in coming future.

I'd rate this dig-till-hell marvel biopic as 8/10.