Children of war are some of the most tormented and traumatised human beings on earth, who see devastation at an early age. There are many movies and documentaries which depict the adverse effect of such incidents on these children. Torbaaz attempts to tell the same story but with possible redemption for those who are trained to be child suicide bombers.

There are no winners in a war, for innocent lives are always lost no matter who wins. But who is the most affected? The answer is, children. Those who are unaware of what caused the devastation and whose future is shaped by the trauma they experienced in the face of war. But then there's always hope. Sanjay Dutt-starrer Torbaaz, which is streaming on Netflix, is a story of this hope which helped a group of children in Afghanistani refugee camps dream and strive for a bright future.

For the second time this year, Sanjay Dutt plays a veteran of loss and grief seeking redemption by putting himself at the service of the next generation. In Sadak 2, Dutt helped a young woman expose a charlatan guru. In Torbaaz, he coaches a bunch of cute and sprightly Afghan kids to play cricket.

Writer-director Girish Malik's Torbaaz has been made for Sanjay Dutt - who is a messiah of sorts out to transform children in an Afghanistan refugee camp. As he, Naseer, says time and again that these "masoom" souls are not terrorists, but are unlucky to be living in camps that are the breeding grounds for violence and mayhem.

Nasser Khan (Sanjay Dutt) is a military doctor who is going through a personal trauma after losing his wife and child during a suicide bombing in Afghanistan. Years after the incident he goes back to Afghanistan where he tries to make a difference in the political situation of the country by encouraging refugee kids to play cricket.

TORBAAZ is the story of an ex-army doctor seeking to bring children joy through cricket. Nasser Khan (Sanjay Dutt) was an army doctor in the Indian Army. At one point, he was working in the Indian embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. His wife Meera (Priyanka Verma) and son Aryan (Preet Bhanushali) also shifted there. Meera started doing social work for the refugees along with Ayesha (Nargis Fakhri).

A refugee camp is the unlikely site for the formation of a rag-tag cricket team. To use the healthy competition sports engenders, in order to vanquish hatred, is a great idea. But consistently sloppy execution mars Torbaaz, slinging it into the category of films-that-could-have-been-something.

It is a stretch to call Torbaaz a film. If we take the cricket metaphor - the idea central to this Sanjay Dutt starrer - it feels like you are watching the net session of the B-team, the aspirants who will never make it to the playing XI and they know it. Instead of putting their best into the practice, they are dragging their feet, throwing a few wides because, heck, what is there to lose? Some of them, the scriptwriters perhaps, want to return to the bench and watch whatever is going viral online.