Cricket may not be our national but all Indians, eat, breathe and sleep cricket. After IPL, the craze for the game has only doubled. Barring India, UK, Australia and few other countries that have been in the game for a long time, now countries like Afghanistan, Kenya and Bangladesh have come into play.
Sanjay Dutt’s Torbaaz tries to cash in on this craze, not just in Indian sub-continent, but across the world, thanks to new-found interest owing to IPL. The film revolves around the story of an army officer, who gets children from refugee camps involved in cricket by opening a camp, so that the blemish of they being labelled as child suicide bombers is wiped off. Nargis Fakhri play his wife in the film.
Torbaaz was also shot in Afghanistan for the sake of authenticity, but major portions of the film were shot in Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan. (Torbaaz was the first film to be shot there) Some parts were shot in Mumbai, Spiti, Manali and Punjab, before wrapping up the shoot in April 2019.
There was a talk of theatrical release in mid-2020, but it was postponed due to the pandemic. The film’s latest trailer has been released by NetFlix and it showcases a rather slick production. We get to see Rahul Dev playing a terrorist leader, who wants young boys to be trained as suicide bombers for the sake of martyrdom. The trailer also shows Sanjay Dutt challenging the terrorists for a match of cricket. It also shows Rahul Dev’s character saying he has no issues with cricket, but wants the children to be groomed for a bigger cause. While the war and Taliban have become a staple of many a big-ticket films in Bollywood, Torbaaz retains the time-tested backdrop, but has added the element of cricket for novelty and to make it appealing to all cricket lovers living abroad.
There is a powerful dialogue by Sanjay Dutt – “Tum paanch waqt ke namaaz padte ho apne maksad ke liye, aur mein paanch waqt ka namaaz padta hoon in bachchon ke liye.”
Torbaaz will release on NetFlix on December 11.