Review: Success, failures, the rise to glory, personal stories and more, hear it all from Sachin himself in Sachin: A Billion Dreams!

One line Review: Inspiring is a small word…Sachin is not a name it’s an emotion of billions of Indians!

Positive Points: It’s a documentary style filming and you get to know your cricketing God personally. It is great that they decided to keep it this way rather than choosing the other route. Here, Sachin shares what he feels before and after iconic matches, his personal life is shared closely and the narration of his life-story is rightly captured.

Negative Points: When real life footages are shown and the narration is by the personality himself, there is hardly any scope for downsides.

Plot: It is a documentary style filming and all the incidents in Sachin Tendulkar’s life are explained with voice overs along with visuals. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar’s story, right from his childhood days is displayed on the big screen for his fans to cherish. Sachin’s story begins when he was a notorious child and how his sister gifts him his first cricket bat. His brother Ajit Tendulkar, whom he calls his biggest support recognised Sachin’s talent and saw a spark in the little child. Ajit then took the little Sachin to coach Ramakant Achrekar, so that he can be trained with perfection. He is blessed with a very supporting family who did everything they could so he can concentrate on his game! Sachin shares a very special relationship with his father, which is shown thoroughly in the film.

Soon at a very young age, Sachin joins international cricket and the rest is history! His big wins and even the low games are captured and narrated. His personal story with wife Anjali also gets its fair share in the film. How the lady let go of her career in medicine to support Sachin and take care of the family is commendable. His family time with children Sara and Arjun make up for some of the good times. The movie takes you through a nostalgic ride of Sachin Tendulkar’s cricket journey and all the moments that you have lived with him!

Direction and other Technical Aspects: Director James Erskine has managed to capture Sachin ‘the emotion’ and what he means to his fans, beautifully. Be it the cheering of ‘Sachin Sachin…’ in stadiums or the 100-100s, there are moments that are sure to render Goosebumps. Also, it is not just about all the glory, the film also narrates the low points in Sachin’s career. The things one can take away from the movie is the hard work and the effort that he has put in to achieve. The practise hours as a child, playing up to 10 matches in a single day cannot be overlooked. Sure, he is an iconic and a truly talented person but, his hard work, persistence and worship for the game has made him the cricketing God. Even after the injury, he took efforts to maintain his body so that he can be fit to be back on the field soon.

Another interesting aspect of the film is that it also depicted what was happening in the country at the backdrop like the Mumbai 26/11 attack among others and how it affected the cricket scenario. For the ones who are not too much into cricket may get bored midway but, the real-life footages and personal stories are the ones enough to keep anyone hooked. The 2011 World Cup Footage along his retirement footage will make you relive all those moments once again.

Music: The music is so apt by A.R. Rahman! It suits and supports the visuals so well. The final big win has a perfect ‘Maa Tuje Salam’ voice track playing behind and the ‘Hind Meri Jind’ along with Sachin theme song and plain sound tracks work wonders!

Final Verdict: Many are bestowed with unique talents, but only few bundle it up with sheer hard work to churn gold out of it! A fan or not a fan, there is no reason why you should not watch the film! Theatres turns stadiums in real!