Kushti

Film: Kushti
Cast: Rajpal Yadav, Om Puri, Sharat Saxena, Khali
Genre: Drama
Direction: TK Rajeev Kumar
Duration: 2 hours 20 minutes
Critic's Rating: 2 stars


Story : Post master Rajpal Yadav falls in love with the local wrestler's daughter but can only win her hand if he defeats the mighty Khali. He enters the tutelage of rival wrestler, Om Puri and hopes to win a losing battle. Will love conquer all the odds?

Movie Review: Rajpal Yadav is a lucky man. He manages to get a lot of film makers who are willing to weave films around him, which isn't what many comedians or character actors can dream of in Bollywood. Sometimes he manages to carry them off (Main Madhuri Dixit Banna Chahti Hoon, Main Meri Patni aur Woh) and sometimes he slips. Here, he just manages to maintain some ground beneath his slippery feet. But only some.

Set in a sleepy village, the film follows the travails of the postmaster (Rajpal Yadav) as he tries to woo wrestler Sharat Saxena's daughter. Needless to say, he keeps getting into sticky situations but none is as bothersome as the climactic one where he must defeat the mighty Khali before he can claim the village belle's hand. He does try to learn a few tricks of the trade from Om Puri who runs his own akhada, but eventually, it's his me-just-a-joker act which creates a bigger bang than all his thigh thumping in the arena.

Needless to say, the high point of the film is Khali's presence in the film. But this one would be quite a disappointment for Khali fans, because the professional wrestler has a minuscule cameo that includes a terrible sequence where he is supposed to savour an item number too. Poor Khali, he simply can't handle this khal-bali and looks truly uncomfortable.