The intention may be good and Sarfira is an inspirational tale of grit, determination and resilience but there is a lot of melodrama in this Akshay Kumar-starrer which is the Hindi remake of Sudha Kongara’s 2020 release Soorarai Pottru, an account of how India’s first low-cost airline came into existence. The film, which is an adaptation of G R Gopinath’s memoir Simply Fly: A Deccan Odyssey, begins well, it really gets you hooked with a huge crisis and tension in the air and then it goes into a flashback tracing the life of an air force officer five years back. All that is captured well and has you glued to the screen but one would often hope for a younger hero in the lead.
Sarfira Movie Review
Sarfira follows the story of Vir Jagannath Mhatre (Akshay Kumar), a middle-class guy hailing from a small village in Maharashtra, who harbours the big dream of launching a low-cost airline and wants to break cost and caste barriers. While one is engrossed with a lot of drama in the life of Vir’s professional life, there is deviation resulting in a loss of interest when a ladki-wala party turns up to see Mhatre in his village. The Tamil Nadu village shown in the original becomes one in Maharashtra and this is where Sarfira suffers mainly because it loses some of its feel and soul in transporting its take-off point from South to Maharashtra. The potential bride is Rani played by chirpy Radhika Madan and very quickly there is justification of Mhatre being much older than Rani. Yet, we can see the mismatch and their chemistry not gelling is quite evident. Both Vir and Rani are sarfira or crazy in their own ways but that too isn’t exciting to watch. He has the ambition of opening his own low-cost airline so that every Indian can fly, whereas, she wants to start her own bakery.
A common man today who finds airfares pretty high, will definitely feel for Vir’s pain and his struggle for finding a venture capitalist. There are multiple roadblocks caused either due to red tapeism, bureaucracy or by plain jealousy of many in the aviation industry, the main among them being the aviation king Paresh Goswami (Paresh Rawal) who obviously doesn’t want Vir to succeed. Vir has managed a quick stint in the Army before switching to full-time entrepreneurship but conquering the skies with nothing is no mean task. All this part is interesting, you are totally hooked on Vir’s journey, his earnestness, sincerity and patience in achieving his goal. Each time Vir’s dream to launch his airline (which he refers to as udta hua Udupi hotel), is about to see the light of the day, he encounters corruption, betrayal, red tapeism, class divide and more. How he overcomes all the challenges despite failing multiple times is what Sarfira keeps us engaged. But what doesn’t work is the age factor which wasn’t the problem with the original. It is not just the age-difference between his screen wife but also with his two partners, his Army mates who were an important part of the team which finally launched Deccan Air, the low-cost airline.
While the subject still remains relevant and director Sudha Kongara [she also directed the Tamil version] storytelling is on point with good treatment and execution but the social context gets diluted in the Hindi version. Secondly, one also wonders where is the need to remake a South film when originals are easily available with English subtitles on OTT platforms these days considering Soorarai Pottru was directly released on a digital platform during the pandemic. However, what works for Sarfira is the celebration of Vir’s journey of perseverance, strength and courage to battle all the obstacles. Akshay’s is a very performance oriented role and he is quite earnest and sincere. Radhika Madan is good as a spirited and an independent-minded Marathi mulgi. She has been given good footage as she gets quite a number of scenes even as the film’s hero is in practically every frame of the film. Seema Biswas is brilliant as Akshay’s mother, she has played the part of an old Marathi woman with a lot of conviction though one might also feel that she could have been given a more meaty part and not just a high pitched wailing mother.
Sarfira cast and crew:
Director – Sudha Kongara
Cast – Akshay Kumar, Radhika Madan, Paresh Rawal, Seema Biswas, Prakash Belawadi, Anil Charanjeett, Rahul Vohra, Irvati Harshe, Gurpal Singh.
