Torbaaz Movie Review - One Of The Worst Films Of This Year

Girish Malik's Torbaaz starring Sanjay Dutt is more like Tiring-baaz.

If you find yourself browsing Netflix and come across Torbaaz, immediately scroll down or leave the page but do not, I repeat, do not click on the play button. Who knew Sadak 2 won't be the only worst film of 2020 starring Sanjay Dutt? Hell, Sadak 2 seems watchable in comparison to Torbaaz. This one neither deserves your time nor bandwidth.

The synopsis of Torbaaz, according to Wikipedia (at the time of writing this review), is, "The film is about child suicide bombers in Afghanistan, who have been trained to believe that killing the enemy is a virtue and glory in afterlife." Go to IMDb and find the summary as, "A man rises from personal tragedy to lead a group of children from a refugee camp to victory, transforming their lives through the game of cricket." Merge both the premises, and you will get a coherent version of this film, which is more than what director Girish Malik with writer Bharti Jakhar manages to achieve. Torbaaz is so fixated with the idea of child suicide bombers that it barely bothers to look beyond the surface. I think if someone asks Malik to elaborate on this film, he would reply, "Suicide bombers bad." Three words. That's how shallow and oblivious Torbaaz is to the root of the problems and politics it tries to shed light on, excruciatingly for a massive 2 hours and 13 minutes.

But the plot is just one predicament out of many. The filmmaking is no saint either. Torbaaz uses wide angles to lose us in the beauty of Afghanistan (cinematography by Hiroo Keswani), probably to remind us how such a gorgeous place is being turned into hell because of devils like Qazar (Rahul Dev) who take away not only the serenity of the area but also the innocence of the unimpeachable children. Fish all you want for a subtext, but Torbaaz, in the end, is all show and no go.

At first, Dutt, playing Naseer, himself with his exasperated expressions, looks uninterested. After a while, he begins to "act." He must have probably realized that he could not leave the project anyway, so why not do something while at it. The boys playing cricket lack personality. They are used as exploitation devices triggering the unfortunate situation prevailing over refugee camp youngsters. And so, out of nowhere and without any motivation, you will find them speaking lines such as, "The Americans make our own Afghan army fight against the Taliban/You're the son of Talibani/I will grow up to be a Taliban. And kill cowards and traitors like you/His mother was also a Taliban supporter. She was a murderer/They're Hazaras. We're Pathans. Pashtun. We can't play with them." You can sense a filmmaker trying hard to provoke pity from the audience. This viewer went for a facepalm. Before I forget, we also have Nargis Fakhri, who...exists.

The funniest part in Torbaaz is the formation of the final cricket match. Its origin story will have you laughing. Naseer goes to a coach (Gavie Chahal) to ask for his help in training the children. The coach refuses, dismissing them as having a wrong mindset. Nasser gets furious and places a bet. If he wins, the coach will have to train the kids at the academy. If not, then Naseer will pay 4000 dollars to him. Now for the rest of the film, I wondered, "Why 4000 dollars? Who makes such a stupid bet? Why not look for another trainer? Still, 4000 dollars? Why?" The number 4000 went around my head, making me crazy. Finally, the bet proved to be unimportant. The terms were rendered useless. But what else could you expect from a film which goes meta as a commentator declares we should have more cricket matches than war. Or where a refugee camp is named Tomorrow's Hope.

Malik had previously directed Jal (2013), which was about a man with a gift of spotting water in a dry land. Jal had Malik swooning over his shots, putting little effort into the story. Nothing much has changed since then. Why, even his graph is more consistent than the entire Torbaaz!

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