Adi Tomar (R Madhavan) is a boxing coach with the Indian Boxing Association. After being a victim of politics that shut his career as a boxer, Adi is forced to become a coach but his brash behavior towards the corrupt association chief, Dev (Khatri) land him up in a transfer to Chennai. Being framed under sexual harassment, Adi is sent to Chennai to train women boxers. After reaching Chennai, Adi remains unhappy with the current team as he feels they lack the spark until he meets Madhi (Ritika) whose elder sister Lux/Lakshmi (Mumtaz Sircar) is a boxer too.

A disgruntled coach past the prime of his life. A quarrelsome girl who doesn't realise what she is capable of. Politics in women's boxing and all that. Sudha Kongara's Saala Khadoos presents a sense of been-there-seen-that, but that was evident right from the moment the trailer hit the tube. So why watch this tale which makes you feel like you're in the middle of a Chak De India-Mary Kom mishmash?

Sports dramas offer very little surprises. Stories about athletes, real or fictional, are frequently a predictable package of an underdog's troubles and triumphs. Like a minute into its first scene -- a young boxer crumbles to her opponent's severe battering, a disheveled tracksuit-clad man storms in last minute hoping to make essential eye contact from the side-lines before the screen blurs to announce 'nine months ago' -- and Saala Khadoos is already all too familiar.

Underdog-to-champion is an all-too familiar sporting film trope. You know, when you see a fiery young girl jousting with her potential coach, that she will come up trumps. The really good films stuff the script with freshness: you know where they are headed and yet you follow the journey with anticipation and pleasure.

Good sport movies are rare to come by. Rarer still are films that adopt an authentic approach to a sport like boxing. In a nation obsessed with cricket and films, boxing is a veritable niche. It's not widely followed let alone played. But that hasn't stopped writer / director Sudha Kongara from crafting a fantastic tale of redemption and triumph in the environs of the sport. Saala Khadoos is easily one of the best films you'll watch in 2016. It's feisty, boisterous and spirited just like any revered sporting champion.

A very important aspect of the film, which actually is the left hook, is blindly overlooked by Rajkumar Hirani and Madhavan, producers of the film. I fault them here and not the writer Sudha Kongara because these here are intense artistes, both proud of the fields they represent: one an actor and the other a director.

The film starts off with the introduction of Adi Tomar aka Adi (R. Madhavan), who, by profession, happens to be a coach of the girls' boxing team. Courtesy the dirty politics (wherein he is falsely accused of sexual harassment), he gets transferred to Chennai. Adi is now on a lookout for a girl who has the much required passion for the sport and fire in her belly.

You know that a sports film is good when it gives its audience an adrenaline rush and makes one root for a character despite knowing fully well that the match result lies not in your cheers, but the director's cut. Saala Khadoos unfortunately does neither. It plays out like an insipid drama as you sit through a story that has been told and retold a few times in Bollywood and unfortunately for the Khadoos team, in ways that are much more effective.

The intention is right. Sudha Kongara's 'Saala Khadoos' talks about the fate of women athletes in general and women boxers specifically. It attempts to expose the politics that goes behind the selection of these girls. The girls, who mostly come from humble backgrounds and are in it more to land a secure government job than for the glory of winning accolades, are subjected to sexual demands made by the men in charge.

At the centre of Saala Khadoos are two down-and-out individuals. One is a disgraced ex-boxer whose life has been a story of missed opportunities. The other is a feisty young girl from a Chennai slum who has nothing to lose. The duo forges an unlikely and uneasy alliance and throws punches at a world in which the odds are stacked heavily against them.

Bollywood has a special corner for sports drama in its heart. If the film turns out to be good, the public is ready to accept it whole-heartedly, like in the case of Lagaan, Chak De! India, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag and Mary Kom. Saala Khadoos is the first sports drama of 2016 (the others that will follow are Aamir Khan's Dangal and Salman Khan's Sultan). It has released alongside the sex-comedy, Mastizaade.

There aren't too many competent sports films in our country, and certainly not too many that can claim to penetrate the hearts and minds of the sports and the sportsperson. Shimit Amin's Chak De India , in spite of its rabble-rousing nationalism, managed to give us a clear and coherent portrait of the sport and the player.