SULTAN Trailer Review

Theatrical trailers are undoubtedly the biggest responsible factor for any movie’s box office opening. It’s the sole criteria for watching a movie within its first weekend for the majority of theatre going public. Since the first weekend business holds utmost importance in recovering the huge investments, theatrical trailer of a film featuring a megastar is nothing less than an event in itself.

Salman Khan’s second outing with Yash Raj Films, Sultan, was announced as 2016’s Eid release amidst much fanfare. Since then the movie has been generating unparalleled buzz which has forced even an event film like Shah Rukh Khan’s ‘Raees’ to back out of the release period.

Sultan’s teasers have left the viewers asking for more and the trailer is awaited with bated breath by one and all. The second teaser had further raised curiosity as it bears an uncanny resemblance with the plot of Aamir Khan’s upcoming movie ‘Dangal’. So without any further ado, let’s get down to reviewing the trailer of the biggest movie of the year.

The trailer provides a perfect overview of Sultan’s storyline based in the backdrop of the state of Haryana. Salman is playing the title role of Sultan, who’s an international wrestling champion. His love interest is female wrestler Aarfa played by Anushka Sharma. Due to his highly ambitious and over confident approach, Sultan loses everything in life. Fortunately, with the help of Amit Sadh, he gets a second chance at the age of 40 when he’s not in shape and out of practice. He’s then trained by Randeep Hooda and becomes a champion again.

There are bound to be comparisons as many scenes in the trailer gives you a sense of Deja Vu. The plot premise is similar to Sylvester Stallone’s hugely popular classic Rocky. Salman’s waiting outside the committee’s room for his second chance reminds us of Shah Rukh Khan’s all-time classic ‘Chak De India’. Sultan’s training scenes look similar to what we have witnessed in ‘Mary Kom’. The MMA fights and rings were recently viewed in Akshay Kumar’s Brothers. And the idea of a champion returning to the ring after retirement sounds similar to Sunny Deol’s Apne.

The storyline is not unique, far from it, but if the movie is blended with perfectly timed emotions, it can turn out to be a huge money spinner.

As far as characters are concerned, this can turn out to be the role of a lifetime for Salman Khan. He is at ease with all combat fight scenes, innocent love dialogues, Haryanvi accent and intense training scenes. Anushka is A-grade as she plays perfect foil to Sultan. Randeep seems to have a meatier role than what is shown in trailer.

The music by Vishal Shekhar is sounding extremely promising as the title song itself has the potential to give goosebumps. The director, Ali Abbas Zafar, has given 2 successful movies with relatively lesser rated stars - much like Kabir Khan (Kabul Express, New York) did before he entered the big league with ‘Ek Tha Tiger’ back in 2012. So the movie has enough steam in it to generate serpentine queues of public outside theatres in the first week of July.

From the trailer, Sutlan seems to be a complete entertainer that has been made keeping in mind the varied fan-base of Salman Khan that stretches to every nook and corner of the country. That’s always the biggest challenge when it comes to planning a film featuring the biggest superstar in the country – the film has to appeal to every section of the audience and the makers of Sultan have successfully achieved this.

A section of the audience also tend to under-rate the acting prowess of Salman Khan, but from the trailer, the actor has nailed every expression. In fact, he excels in quite a few scenes. The intensity with which he has performed, especially towards the end of the trailer, is commendable.

Rating:

Review by Abhishek Sharma (tweets @abhu_sharma)

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Trade response: Like already mentioned in one of our earlier articles, the trade response to Sultan has been overwhelmingly positive. No trailer this year has come close to generating the kind of buzz that Sultan has and it’s highly unlikely that any other trailer will better it this year. We are not talking about quality or content here, it’s the sheer interest and buzz that the trailer has generated – is quite unprecedented. Yash Raj Films’ will go all out to give it the biggest showcasing that it deserves and this should result in a humongous opening at the box office.

Sultan also releases 5 weeks after Akshay Kumar’s ‘Housefull 3’. There are no major ‘mass entertainers’ in between (the only other big release at multiplexes is ‘Udta Punjab), which should give the film a major advantage when it releases in theatres during Eid this year.

The trailer of Sultan gets full marks from a trade point-of-view. It ticks every box and the last film that managed a similar result was ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan’, but even that film didn’t have action to attract the masses on Day 1.