Reviews Out: Akshay Kumar's 'Sarfira' Fails To Offer Anything New
The official Hindi remake of Suriya’s Soorarai Pottru, featuring Akshay Kumar, is here. Directed by Sudha Kongara, Sarfira hit theatres today, and the reviews have poured in.
Kongara’s remake of her own film, which won the National Award, struggles to balance the story and its lead actor, writes NDTV. The Khiladi actor takes centre stage while the other characters “merely hover in the backdrop.”
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Although the Hindi remake never deviates in a major way from the original Soorarai Pottru with a “scene-to-scene rehash, although the primary location is shifted from a village in Tamil Nadu and Chennai to a hamlet in Maharashtra and Mumbai,” the tone of Sarfira fluctuates too much, making the story appear too melodramatic and “screechy.”
Another major drawback of the film is the chemistry between Akshay and Radhika Madan, which falls flat when compared to the “self-propelling” chemistry that Suriya and Aparna Balamurali created in the Tamil film, writes NDTV.
Echoing similar sentiments, Indian Express highlights the “clear” age difference between the romantic pairing. Akshay Kumar once again does the same thing that the audience has seen him do throughout his career: fighting for the rights of the people, standing up to his Army superiors, and more. “It is Akshay once again playing Akshay the Everyman who will fix Everything,” describes an Indian Express review.
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“The Hindi version runs into a few air pockets that it finds hard to navigate. Viewers of Soorarai Pottru, which is available on Prime Video along with a Hindi-dubbed version Udaan, will find nothing new in its frame-by-frame remake,” writes Scroll which also highlights the jarring age problem between the Akshay and Radhika.
Based on Air Deccan founder GR Gopinath’s memoir titled Simply Fly: A Deccan Odyssey, the story follows former Indian Air Force pilot Vir Mhatre (Akshay Kumar), who goes up against Paresh Goswami (Paresh Rawal), the founder of Jaz Airlines. The film revolves around the efforts of Mhatre to establish a low-cost airline for the common folks, breaking the barrier of cost and caste (although the latter is barely given much attention to in both films).
The screen play of the movie is written by Sudha Kongara and Shalini Ushadevi, and dialogues by Pooja Tolani. Sarfira is produced by Aruna Bhatia, Suriya and Jyotika and Vikram Malhotra, under the banners of Cape of Good Films, 2D Entertainment and Abundantia Entertainment respectively. The music will be scored by GV Prakash Kumar.
