Tanuj Poddar While Mary Kom was a known figure in the public domain, the story of her struggle was not that well known. There is an inkling in public knowledge of the hardships and bureaucracy sports person in India generally have to go through to compete at international events and off late there have been a few bollywood biopics focused on individuals and teams of Indian sports. Most of the times sports biopics tend to focus on the technical challenges and failures that makes a person strong and rise above themselves. That is why these stories are very inspiring.But every sportperson is also a human being with a personal struggle similar to others. This movie focuses on these personal struggles and how Mary overcomes the same to reach the pinnacle of the sport.The film focuses on Mary's struggle to induct herself into the sport, her family's reluctance, her growth into a champion, her decision to marry and start a family, self doubt about her ability to come back and compete and working hard to become a champion again. If you were to try and put a story around this in your mind, then probably you would visualize it similar to how the movie spans out on the screen. These all aspects are shown in a way that doesn't really allow you to connect with the protagonist. While the actors do carry the movie on thier shoulders, the script and editing certainly needed to be sharper.Where the movie fails is perhaps in the development of different characters that hold importance in Mary's life and support her in achieving her ambitions. They are there to support her at crucial moments but there could have been some time spent on showing the reason for their belief in her. In fact, Mary's character while well enacted doesnt come out well enough to help the audience relate to her. Why she started boxing, what the coach really spotted in her and how that confidence grew as she developed as a sportsperson. Why did her father oppose her pursuing the sport. What kind of politics really took place amongst sports officials. How she grew as a sportsperson as she climbed the ladder of success. While there is a generic way of showing it, there are somethings specific to a sport which one wants to see when they watch a biopic. Still the cinematography was good to capture the action in the ring and the preparation for the same.I think it still was a good attempt that paved way for future films like saala khadoos and mukkabaaz that were more relatable to the audience. Needless to say, it also gave a more diverse look to Priyanka's otherwise glamourous career.

fahimay This movie is about an inspiring life story. A Manipuri girl from a quite ordinary background with a knack for getting into physical squabble wherever she goes, decides to try her hand at boxing on chancing upon a pair of boxing gloves. From a culture where tomboyish girls are frowned upon, she rebels her way through to get formal training in the boxing sport. The movie takes us on a ride of how she undergoes the customary journey of a woman as a wife and a mother and still holding her fort as an international boxing woman champion. The cast has been aptly chosen to portray Manipuri features and lifestyle except Priyanka, which we can overlook as she gets immersed in the character of Mary Kom and gives her best to exude the inner character of this female icon. Watching movies like these do, at most times, focus well deserved attention to such achievers who were practically unknown before but we Google them up after the movie. Certain aspects of the movie could have been better according to some critics but being a very simple movie watcher, I could count more pluses than minuses. A dialogue that I absolutely loved is when the trainer, Sunil Thapa, tells her that a woman becomes stronger only after attaining motherhood. The female body withstands a lot of physical and mental exertion on bearing a child, but I can claim with assurance that it makes a woman fit to face anything. That is the message this movie conveys and we feel proud to be from a country of this undeterred female achiever, Mary Kom.

DareDevilKid Reviewed by: Dare Devil Kid (DDK)Rating: 2.5/5 starsMary Kom deserved better than this. As a sporting icon, as an Indian woman - the two traits this self-proclaimed biopic claims to overtly harp on, only to end up serving mediocre melodrama. Mary Kom absolutely needed to be more than a Bollywood load of tripe that manipulates so many realities of her life to turn her story into popcorn masala, highlighted by over-the-top histrionics coming from its heroine (in Bollywood, they inexplicably call it good acting). What's difficult to fathom is the filmmakers' reluctance to narrate Kom's story by adhering to facts through easily-accessibly data, or her written biography or inputs straight from the horse's mouth and those close to her. Makes you wonder what exactly the pugilist was doing on the sets.You would hope to get a better understanding of what defines MC Mary Kom - the person behind the passion – from the film. The litmus test for Omung Kumar perhaps did not lie in turning from set designing to film direction. It lay in comprehending the indomitable will to excel that has defined the aggression of Mary Kom as a boxing phenomenon - one who meteorically rose from an impoverished corner in Manipur to become India's reason for joy in the world of amateur boxing. Instead, Kumar, makes no effort to explore Mary Kom's inspirational persona, to understand the psyche behind the suffering, the struggle and, finally, the triumphs. Rather, the film takes an easy route. It bottles vignettes of her poverty, the early resistance coming from her father, her love life and marriage, motherhood and its ensuing sacrifice, and finally her comeback all into one pot-boiling cauldron to serve as a banal concoction of clichés, specifically tailored to appease sentiments of jingoism and superficial bravado, while presenting itself as casual box-office fare for stoking the fires of the underdog spirit. Its only aim is to make you laugh, cry, and feel proud as an Indian by turns. In short, Mary Kom is a neatly manipulated blend of plastic passions that masquerades as an inspirational biopic. In a way the film is smart commercial stuff masquerading as an underdog's tale. This is sad and inexcusable, considering the source material is actually one of the most triumphant underdog tales in recent times.The worst part of the film perhaps has to be its climax, a blatant ploy at manipulating viewer sentiments. The sequence mixes Mary's comeback fight after motherhood in the 2008 World Championship final in China with scenes of her baby's heart surgery happening in India, news that she receives mere minutes before her bout. Logic defies how and why the turn of actions in the ring should be in sync with the baby's health in the OT (every time Mary takes a hit, the baby's heart monitor graph also nearly flattens; when she finally triumphs in the match the doctors rush to announce the child is out of danger). This creates total confusion over which year the movie ends, since the filmmakers take the liberty of combining two events that happened three years apart. 2008 was the year Kom won her first gold at the World Championships, post the birth of her twins, against her great rival Steluta Duta of Romania (Sasha Podolski of Germany in the film) in Ningbo, China. It was only three years later that her son Nainai suffered from a problem with his heartbeat and had to undergo an operation for the same. The surgery was conducted only after Mary had returned from China after winning a gold at the Asia Cup, a tournament she entered having already known about Nainai's illness. Sure, cinematic leniency can be granted. But not to the extent where you blatantly distort facts and give two hoots for authenticity.The very Punjabi Priyanka tries her best to impress as Mary Kom, freckles on her face duly added by the make-up artist. Though she gets the physicality and body language of the part right, she completely fails to match it with the expressions, diction, ethos, and emotions of her character. However, the rest of the cast, especially Sunil Thapa, who play's Kom's coach, and Darshan Kumaar, Kom's husband, deserve credit for nailing their characters to the tee.The film looks at a whole lot of subtexts including women's empowerment and racism against Northeasterners, but does not really deal with them. There is a sense of over-the-top artificiality about everything in Mary Kom, the film. In the end, the film ticks off some of Mary Kom's career achievements and a few key personal struggles, but doesn't tell you much more about her as a person or her disposition than the innumerable headlines do.

jeringeorgepj This week's release, Omung Kumar's MARY KOM is one such film which is a biopic on one of India's most illustrious sports personalities, Mary Kom, who, despite all her hardships, put our country on the international map with her achievements. The film goes on to show the real life story of this sports star, which not many are aware of. The film serves as an eye opener not just on the fact that India can produce international 'gold medal winning' boxers, but also that Manipur is very much a part of India! Omung does a great job of building up the climax with heart wrenching scenes where Mary chooses to box over spending a blissful life with her family. Post her opting to box, Mary accidentally lands up at the boxing training academy of her coach Narjit Singh (Sunil Thapa), who, after seeing her persistence, teaches her that 'the world maybe round for everyone, but her world should be the shape of the boxing ring, a Square'! Mary's talent for the sport combined with her coach's training form a deadly unbeatable lethal combo who go on to win international competitions galore.