‘Sarfira’ movie review: Akshay Kumar is on autopilot in this ‘Soorarai Pottru’ remake

A still from ‘Sarfira’

At a time when audiences are embracing pan-Indian films rooted in red soil, it feels strange that there is still a need for mounting a Sarfira. A remake of Suriya’s popular Tamil film Soorarai Pottru, Sarfira suffers because it loses some of its soul in transporting its take-off point from Madurai to a more generic Maharashtra. This is a common snag that appears when Akshay Kumar drives retrofitted big-budget vehicles sourced from the Deccan, for perhaps the star is focussing more on volume than the quality of the ride these days.

Old timers would remember how Jeetendra revived his career out of remakes in the 1980s. With Akshay, the generational loss is getting increasingly magnified because the originals are easily available for comparison, not just for critics but for common audiences as well. Soorarai Pottru was directly released on an OTT platform during the pandemic and is available with English subtitles and a Hindi dubbed version called Udaan.

The market has its shenanigans. The makers know that the story of Captain (Retd) G.R. Gopinath, who made low-cost aviation in India a reality with the launch of frill-free Air Deccan in 2003, will have a pan-India resonance but don’t seem to have faith in the box-office accepting a South Indian star or an actor who would make an effort to be true to the regional essence of the character. Recently, Rajkummar Rao showed it with Shrikanth Bolla, but the subject or perhaps the market demanded a star here.

What saves Sarfira from becoming a Cuttputlli is writer-director Sudha Kongara’s storytelling which makes the emotional core of the film work across languages. We know the genre; we understand the template where the hero rises against a series of unsurmountable odds to realise his dream and fulfill the promise he made to his people. What makes it different is the way Sudha smartly maneuvers her way around the template to create a social entertainer that has the potential to keep the masses emotionally engaged and doesn’t let the discerning outrightly diss the one-man show.

Drawing from Gopinath’s book Simply Fly, she along with co-writers Shalini Ushadevi and Pooja Tolani has woven a compelling story around the churn in the aviation sector at the turn of the millennium and has given it colour and context laced with emotional outbursts and witty interludes.

In a thinly veiled screenplay, the film refers to how the idea of a low-cost carrier challenged the monopoly of Jet Airways, the ambition of Kingfisher Airlines, and talks of the red-tapism that kept even Ratan Tata waiting. Gopinath gave wings to the common Indian’s aspirations. He realised ahead of market leaders that air travel is no longer a luxury but a necessity for the new Indian on the move. That Gopinath had to eventually shake hands with the rivals to keep the airline afloat is not in the syllabus of the genre where relentless hero worship is the rule.

In the realm of fiction, Veer (Akshay) has grown up in a village where electricity has come after years of petition and prayer and where people have to travel for hours to catch the train. Restless for change, he makes a career in the Air Force but his life gets a new meaning when he could not see his school teacher father, with whom he had an ideological tiff, in his last moments. He plans a low-cost airline but Paresh Goswami (Paresh Rawal is in form as the touchy tycoon suffering from OCD), the big fish in the aviation market, doesn’t want to have him a share of the pie. He creates obstacles in Veer’s path and Sudha ensures that not all of them are predictable. The one with a well-meaning venture capitalist ably played by Prakash Belawadi stands out. In his first appearance in a Hindi film, the seasoned Sarathkumar impresses with an impactful cameo.

Well-paced and smartly edited, the episodic screenplay, dotted with Veer’s equal relationship with his entrepreneur wife Rani (Radhika Madan) and a strong mother (Seema Biswas), ensures 155 minutes don’t feel like a long time in a chair. Cast in the Pataakha mould, Radhika merges into the Marathi milieu better than Akshay but we miss the natural appeal of Aparna Balamurali that made the feminist sparks feel realistic. Her unalloyed intimacy with Suriya was the highlight of the Tamil version. Give it to the age gap, here the chemistry between Akshay and Radhika is more or less cosmetic and the feminist touches feel like another layer of make-up.

Similarly, the social texture of the story also gets diluted in the remake. Early in the Tamil version, Maran’s (Suriya) dance during a funeral procession placed him in a social context. Here it is more like the character living up to the film’s title. Maran’s socialist father had more socio-political heft than the emotional swell created by Veer’s father and mother. In the original, Paresh reflected on his rise from a modest background. It helped in understanding his obnoxious behaviour towards blue-collar workers in his organisation. Here Rawal gets no such elbow room.

More importantly, the intensity and purpose in Suriya’s portrayal of the character were the selling points of the film. The different looks that he donned to portray different periods felt organic but with Akshay the layers in storytelling get ironed out. Of course, he is sincere but these days his sincerity feels more like that of a punctual factory worker who has put the machine on auto mode.

Sarfira is currently running in theatres