Champion movie review: Messy, unsparingly long rehash of the age-old masala film

2/5

Story:

Story: Siddhanth (Sachin Dhanpal) is a highly talented athlete on the brink of national success. However, a series of involuntary events brings him face-to-face with a menacing fake currency syndicate: can Siddhanth overcome all the hurdles and make his dream of winning a national gold come true?

Review:

If you were compelled to describe Shahuraj Shindhe's Champion as a movie, you are likely to use a number of Kannada and Telugu films from the 2000s as references and rest the case. The idea is to suggest that the film is a mash-up of conventions, one that composes a young hero bustling with ambition, a love track that ebbs and flows, and an antagonist(s) who tries all he can to stop the hero in his tracks. And yet, writer-director Shahuraj Shindhe puts it all together without any nuance, intent, or innovation, and Champion, despite the promising storyline and the luxury of those very conventions, ends up being a complete mess of a film. To make things worse, the director is made to deal with an uninspired protagonist in Sachin Dhanpal who, although looks fairly believable as an 'athlete', lacks the required lure and command for a leading man. 

But that doesn't mean that the film lacks the scope of being a worthy entertainer. At the center, there's the talented hero who is on the cusp of success, has doting parents who make sacrifices for his cause, and has a promising love life that completes the cycle. On the other hand, there is the nemesis in the form of a mafia, so tall and powerful that it is beyond the grasp of the law. Now, like in any run-of-the-mill film, the main plot point occurs when the hero collides with this antagonizing force and comes of age at the end of it, feeling fatigued but fulfilled. Good films, regardless of the overuse of these tropes, work because of the conviction and finesse behind them but in the case of those that don't feature these traits, the result is insufferable: Champion, unfortunately, belongs to the latter.

The makers try to cover up the lack of a solid script and an approach through unnecessary embellishments. Sunny Leone makes a friendly appearance in the Dingar Billi song, B. Ajaneesh Loknath is roped in as the music composer, and Aditi Prabhudeva comes in as the star but none of these are effective because the narrative underneath is bland. Champion also features an unfunny comedy track (including actors like Chikkanna, Girish Shivanna, Mandya Ramesh, and others) but these sequences only add to the runtime and serve no purpose whatsoever. Barring a few gripping scenes about the track sport and the training that the protagonist undertakes, Champion remains a tedious watch throughout.

Verdict:

Champion has a few traces of an entertaining watch but the lackluster efforts on the makers' part ruin the prospects. The weak central performances and half-baked plot don't help either so the film has, at end of it all, very little to offer to its audiences. Should you choose to still step out to get the big screen experience, Kantara seems to be going great guns out there.