Review: 'Standby' is a patch job

Film: Standby
Director: Sanjay Surkar
Cast: Adinath Kothare, Siddharth Kher, Sachin Khedekar, Dalip Tahil, Manish Chaudhary
Rating: *1/2

Sanjay Surkar is a national award winner so naturally when somebody goes to see the film the expectations are high. It seemed that Sanjay was too conscious of the fact that he was making a Hindi commercial film in spite of the fact that he had no saleable star-cast. Otherwise how would you expect a good storyline to be ruined by a few silly song-and-dance numbers and another really gross item number? The film has a good script, ruined by the effort to make it commercially viable.

The story revolves around the Santosh Trophy matches, which is the breeding ground for national level players. The film is the story of two footballers, one son of a very rich father and the other from a relatively poor background, both of whom nurture a dream of playing for the national side. The son of the industrialist doesn’t get selected in the national side, which triggers off a series of political ploys to get him, and that happens to be the crux of the story.  The politics of the game has been portrayed well, but the dialogues as well as performances by some of the actors appear like a patch job.

The film shows its brilliance in some scenes. A few of the cast members like Adinath Kothare and Siddharth Kher have done a tad better job along with the actor portraying the role of the Indian coach. It’s a good watch for those who are associated with the game or love the game. Those who don’t follow football might not find it all that appealing.