Aziz Ali (Farhan Akhtar), a gangster from Dongri meets Dr Ananya (Mrunal Thakur) who changes his life by making him realize he has a better choice of becoming a boxer than continue his current way of living. Coached by Nana Prabhu (Paresh Rawal), Aziz soon reaches heights of success but an incident changes his life with a ban on his boxing. Many years later, much older with an unfit body, Aziz faces the task of returning back to the boxing ring and earn the respect he lost back again.
The film follows every sports movie cliche, which was visible from the trailer itself. There's the training montage, Aziz spending time with orphan children a way to melt Ananya's heart, a very manipulative temple scene to bring Nana Prabhu closer to her grand-daughter and a competitor Prithvi out of nowhere shown in detail to tell who Aziz would be facing in the Final. I won't say Nana Prabhu's prejudice is wrong, I mean most people without a reason hold such thoughts and here he atleast had lost his wife in the blast to form that opinion and have the hatred inside.
The Hindu-Muslim love angle gave the movie something different despite Mrunal Thakur acting her part little too over-excited way at places. Some songs are poorly forced in, and also except for title and Arjit's track are forgettable.
You can't really keep interest of a viewer with same 'hero will find motive, train hard, make mistake, get the glory back with a comeback' - this formula is overdone now. That is one of main reasons I felt surprised why would Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra want to make this movie.
Even if the movie was trimmed by 30 so mins, it would had made very little difference to me. While the 1st act felt very regular bollywood drama, 2nd act felt rushed specially the life after the ban went by too quickly.
Farhan Akhtar shines in the act, mainly the Aziz Ali the boxer, while in the Azzu bhai he was so-so for me. Commendable effort in the transformation he did for the role unfortunately the movie isn't good enough to remember his act like say Vineet for Mukkabaaz or Aamir in Dangal. Paresh Rawal I felt needed to be given more dialogues at the boxing matches, that might had made atleast the bouts enjoyable which despite been shot well didn't work for me. Vijay Raaz is wasted in a nothing role, while Darshan Kumaar felt comical in that semi-final revenge bout as the judge.
I felt invested mostly in the romantic track of Farhan-Mrunal and the final bout of State Championships was the only one that was well executed. Overall, Toofaan is an average movie that just lacked in the writing department and asked too much from the actors to deliver in the end.
My Rating : 5/10
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