Sultan Takes Salman To A  New Level Of Superstardom

During the last two years something has happened with [tooltip id=”88b6af99531f838ed90aed058b7d870a”][tooltip id=”c1b465420d07c688942ed18eadfd9f92″ keyword_color=”#000000″ background_color=”#ffffff”][tooltip id=”4db8f5608d45f5de7881d9bce162f4bf”]Salman Khan[/tooltip][/tooltip][/tooltip]. He has started to take the camera seriously. Earlier he just played himself over and over again. But in Barjangi Bhaijaan and to a much lesser extent PremRatan Dhan Payo he played a  character.

In Sultan Salman just transforms—there is no other way to put it—into a Haryanvi wrestler, dhobi pachaad and all.

The wrestling scenes are not faked.Neither are Anushka Sharma’s moves in the ring as she takes on a male opponent.Yes,she plays a wrestler too.And wife, and mother…And as Sultan stares at her admiringly he  mumbles, “Just as a doctor or an engineer marries in the same profession,a pehelwan can only marry a pehelaan.”

He then proceed to –and I quote the very earthy Ms Aushka in the trailer—ma-bahen of the English language to impress her.

Not a false  is struck  in the ring or outside it. Salman seems to play the wrestler even as fate plays with the wrestler’s life.

It’s a classic fall-from-grace story, with the fallen sports champ redeeming himself with the help of  an eager determined sponsor(Amit Sadh, with a brand new haircut ) and a trainer(Randeep Hooda, with his trademark arrogant attitude , he behaves like  sports coach from Hollywood) . Hooda  looks Sultan up and down and declares, “I don’t train dead people.”

To play a near-goner,a  a gas-been wrestlter with a pot-belly takes guts specially when you are every youth’s fit-and-fine idol. Salman has done it. In the sequence where he stands staring in helpess anguish at his paunch in the mirror, he proves he is moved way beyond the other Khan competitors into a zone of his own.

Salman never lose steam.Never  hides anything about Sultan, frailties weaknesses arrogance and downfall are all ondisplat. There is a  disarming guilelessness to the protagonist—almost naked in the akhaada and just as stripped down emotionally, it seems—and an equally unadorned aura about the man’s saga as told in the trailer.

Fully focused on getting our attention without trying ,Sultan crashes through the glass wall of our cynicism,demolishing our belief  that Salman is destined to play only himself.

He is so much in character that when Sultan falls from fab to flab Salman actually grows a paunch for the tale.But fans needn’t cringe. Salman’s Sultan soon bounces back with a swipe in the ring  that leaves his opponent as breathless  as we.

Sultan is  one swoop of adrenaline, designed and cut to create a tension that nimbly weaves the Haryanvi wrestlers personal life with his tryst in the ring.

“The real fight is not in the ring but in how you face life,” Salman voiceover speaks up. Easy to be dismissive of the sporty spirit when life is serving you lemons and you decided to make lemonade. Did someone call Sultan  a loser after seeing his gross belly? Don’t judge  a book by its cover. Sultan has an irresistible aura  of defiant sportsmanship about him.He won’t take defeat in  life love or wrestling without putting up a brave fight.

You want Salman to go to jail for an alleged black buck incident? You want him to punished for using the rape analogy insensitively? You want him behind bars?  The deafening roar as Sultan enters the akhada tells another story.[tooltip type=”box” html=”Input Your Content Here” box_background_color=”#eeeeee” box_opacity=”0.95″ box_padding=”10″ box_border_color=”#3F3F3F” box_border_width=”1″ box_border_radius=”0″ id=”88b6af99531f838ed90aed058b7d870a” /][tooltip type=”box” html=”Salman Khan Bollywood Actor” box_background_color=”#eeeeee” box_opacity=”0.95″ box_padding=”10″ box_border_color=”#3F3F3F” box_border_width=”1″ box_border_radius=”0″ id=”c1b465420d07c688942ed18eadfd9f92″ /]