There’s a moment somewhere in the beginning of the film when Salman Khan’s character comes to a halt at a rail crossing, and waits, just like the rest of us do, for the train to pass.
In that instant we know that Sultan is about to push twin boundaries. Of a star’s scope, and of mainstream Bollywood. That this will not be the super-human, super-hero Bhai who has been shown crossing the tracks just a whisker ahead of a rushing locomotive from one of his several forgettable flicks. That this will be a Khan who has to, literally, do a lot of heavy-lifting to win the crown.
And win it he does. ‘Sultan’ has him breaking free from Bhai-giri bondage by getting his character to crack and bleed. His down-and-out wrestler has foibles, is fallible, is human. Sultan Ali Khan has faults, and is punished for it. Because of which Sultan scores, and delivers a solid entertainer with heft.
It isn’t as if Sultan doesn’t struggle with its profusion of familiar tropes. There’s your underdog-to-champion, in which child-like Jat Sultan is shown starting from nothing, becoming a world champion in no time at all(yes, there is some sweat and tears involved in the training, but not too much, because hey, this is Bollywood). There’s a romance which involves risible songs and dialogue( ‘Baby ko bass pasand hai’, with a shift-and-lift-of-male-and-female derriers). But the girl in question, played by Anushka Sharma with sparkle, is a wrestler herself. She is a woman with ambition, and she’s made to talk of uplifting ‘mothers’ and ‘sisters’ in patriarchal Jatland.
