Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India

Best cricket movie ever made!!!

Lagaan is a timeless classic movie which released in 2001. It is the classiest movie ever made by Asutosh Gowarikar. Even after over two decades, if we watch this movie, we will feel so spell bound by the movie. It is a film which every fan of cricket would watch. Even those who have no interest in the game would love this movie. The length of this movie is three hours and forty five minutes and yet every moment in this movie is very captivating and spell binding. The backdrop of the movie is in the ending of the nineteenth century when India is under the British rule. It is based on a village named Champaner in Gujarat which which is suffering from drought and the villagers find that they cannot pay the British rulers their taxes. They approach the Maharaja of their region named Raja Puran Singh played by Kulbhushan Karbanda and put forth their plea requesting him to cancel their tax payments because of their drought. Raja Puran Singh is a very kind hearted, understanding and considerate king and wants to exempt them from their taxes but he cannot do so since he is only a subordinate king to the British Raj who can only follow their orders of collecting the yearly taxes from his subjects. But yet Raja Puran Singh sincerely wishes to help hid subjects and takes them to the British ruling in charge of their region, Captain Russel so that they can put forth their plea to him to exempt them from paying their taxes. Captain Russel in his wily and haughty demeanour, asks the villagers to play a cricket match with his cricket team and if they win, they need not pay their taxes for three years. But if they lose, they will have to pay triple their due taxes. Bhuvan played by Aamir Khan who is the leader of his village accepts the challenge much to the shock of his fellow villagers to form his cricket team to take on Captain Russel's formidable cricket team. How he does so is the most interesting sight to see in this film. Each player of the team has his own unique distinct character and some of them are extremely comical characters in the way they dress, walk and speak. Elizabeth Russel who is the sister of Captain Russel very much unlike her brother and many of the British rulers is a very kind hearted and humane lady. Finding the acts of her brother of challenging the villagers to play a cricket match with his formidable cricket team to be very unkind and ruthless. She therefore decides to help Bhuvan and his team mates learn and master the game of cricket and be ready to take on the cricket team of Captain Russel. It is a three months long training. Apart from the positive effects of Bhuvan on his team mates which pumps us also to live our lives in the same spirit, we see a lot of comedy from the various characters in this film and apart from that there is romance as well. Bhuvan's love interest is Gauri played by Gracy Singh and we get to see many sweet, innocent and pure love exchanges between them with a couple of love songs. Elizabeth Russel develops silent feelings of love for Bhuvan but always keeps it a secret from him, knowing his relationship with Gauri. The cricket match in the movie takes place in the last one and a half hours of the movie. It has such a spell binding and nail biting effect that no matter how many ever times you watch this cricket match, you will feel like you are watching this cricket match for the first time. When Captain Russells team bats first, you will feel sometimes his team having an edge over Bhuvan's team and sometimes Bhuvan's bowling team having an edge on Captain Russells team. You will get to see the hilarious bowling style of Goli played by Daya Shankar Pandey. The same suspenseful unpredictability, you will experience when you watch Bhuvan's team bat. There you will see the hilarious batting stance of Guranmamare played by Rajesh Upadhyay. The cricket match has great mixture of emotions such as humour, fear, anxiety, happiness, anger and sadness. Over all, this is a great masterpiece movie classic.

This has to be one of the best sports movie!

In my opinion this film changed the way films were being made in the mainstream bollywood and credit must go to Ashutosh Gowariker and Aamir Khan. At 3 hours 40 minutes film feels bit of stretch but it is entertaining all around with no dull moment. All the performance are top notch. And score from AR Rahman is a cherry on the top.

The climax was an easy 11/10, but the buildup to it was way too boring and dragged out.

This film is average 🤏

Music that you can sing all day, romance, politics, friendship, excitement. And then- the dancing!!

Watched the movie first time and was on my feet whole time while the game of cricket was going. Truly amazing portrayal of underdog team winning there dream of life.

Lagaan is lavish, rousing entertainment in the old-fashioned tradition of Hollywood musicals.

One of the best from Amir khan.