SULTAN. Review on Sultan

This film takes the dictum a bit too literally. It refuses to give up - it goes on and on to drive home the point about the greatness of its ageing grappler-hero.

In one early scene, the wheel of a tractor gets stuck in a deep puddle outside the office where retired Olympic and world champion Sultan does a lowly clerical job.

The hero is summoned to the spot and he pulls the vehicle out without batting an eyelid. That is where his correlation to a bull begins.

Sports entrepreneur Akash Oberoi(Amit Sadh), owner of the wrestling franchise Pro Take-Down who has arrived from Delhi, is impressed enough with the deed to rope in Sultan as the floundering event's only Indian fighter.

At another point, having decided to become a wrestled to prove the doubting heroine wrong, Sultan yokes himself to a plough and tills a plot of land.

It is a part of a punishing training regimen that includes trying to outrun a diesel locomotive. There are no half measures for this bloke.

Later, when he is on the comeback trail after a self-imposed hiatus, Sultan's MMA coach Fateh Singh(Randeep Hooda) advises him to aspire to be an "unbreakable bull". When Sultan does become one, the coach exults: "Poora saand(bull) hai."

Mercifully, Sultan isn't all bull. But as a sports film, it does not quite take the genre by the horns and deliver a product unsullied by the conventions of a Bollywood potboiler.

One of Sultan Ali Khan's key takeaways from the ring is that wrestling isn't just a sport. It is a bout that one fights with life.

It takes an awful amount of time and endless bone-crunching for that realization to dawn upon him.

Anushka, Amit Sadh, Anant Vidhaat(as Sultan's friend Govind) and Kumud Mishra make their presence felt in no uncertain terms. In a special appearance, Randeep Hooda makes all the right moves.

But Sultan is a Salman Khan film made solely for the superstar's fans. It has everything to please its target audience. It has megahit written all over it.