The dubbing on the local train announcer in the opening scene is so loud it nearly drowns out the dialogue between the two brothers, which is a weird audio mix that somehow survives right into the final print of Shaad Ali's 2018 sports biographical drama. It is a small thing that bugged me, sitting there in the dark while the projector whirred, wondering why nobody in the post-production suite noticed the levels clipping every time a commuter yelled about platform tickets. Sports biographies in Hindi films usually love a grand orchestral sweep right from the second the logos fade out, but here we just get the clack-clack of sleeper cars and two guys arguing over whether a bicycle chain can be fixed with a piece of wire and a prayer. Sandeep Singh was not born into glory or high-performance training camps with pristine synthetic turfs and European nutritionists, but rather into the dust-choked railway colonies of Shahabad where hockey sticks were whittled down from whatever scrap wood happened to be lying behind the station master's office. The screenplay by Ali and Siva Subramaniam doesn't spend three hours setting up a tragic backstory because they know we have seen this template before, choosing instead to drop us straight into the petty rivalries of domestic life where older brother Bikram beats sense into younger brother Sandeep with a wet towel.

Diljit Dosanjh plays Sandeep not as a born hero waiting for his destiny but as a lazy teenager who would much rather chase a girl named Harpreet than run five kilometers before dawn. There is a slouch to his shoulders in the early scenes that feels entirely un-actorly, the kind of physical posture you get from spending too many afternoons leaning against a wall outside a tea stall waiting for a glance from someone who barely knows you exist. When he finally picks up the stick, it is out of sheer romantic desperation and stubborn ego rather than any deep-seated patriotic fervor, which immediately rescues the film from the usual self-important dryness of sports biopics. He has this way of blinking slowly when someone yells at him on the pitch, like he is calculating whether the scolding is worth the sweat, and it makes his later transformation into a lethal penalty-corner specialist feel earned because you watched him drag his feet every inch of the way. Angad Bedi as Bikram carries the heavier emotional burden of being the sibling who had to give up his own stick so the family could afford one decent pair of shoes for the prodigy, and he plays it with a tightly wound frustration that never boils over into melodrama even when the script practically begs him to scream and throw furniture.

Tapsee Pannu shows up as Harpreet, and if I'm honest, the romantic subplot occupies about twenty minutes too much screen time during the middle stretch when the plot needs to be focusing on drag-flick mechanics and selection politics. She is good, she always has that sharp, no-nonsense screen presence that anchors whatever she is in, but the directors keep giving her scenes where she just stands on the sidelines looking supportive while Sandeep does something stupidly reckless to prove his love. Yet there is a genuine chemistry between her and Dosanjh that feels remarkably lived-in, especially during a quiet conversation on a dusty terrace where they argue about the nutritional value of boiled eggs versus parathas. When the story shifts to the national camp and the absolute vultures who run the sports federation behind closed doors, the film finds its teeth and stops worrying about whether the audience is getting enough romance. The coaches and officials are drawn with a greasy realism that feels plucked straight from the worst corridors of bureaucratic corruption, men in ill-fitting blazers who treat players like disposable commodities until a medal lands on their desk and they can squeeze their way into the photo op.

The cinematography by Sahil Ansari avoids the trap of making every single training montage look like a Nike commercial, keeping things grounded in the harsh, bleached-out sunlight of North Indian stadiums where the grass is mostly dead patches of dirt and patchy weeds. Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy's score relies a bit too heavily on that one pounding drum track every time Sandeep lines up for a penalty corner, repeating the motif three or four times across the second half until you can hum the bassline before the whistle blows. It's a noticeable crutch, especially when the visual editing of the match sequences is already doing the heavy lifting of building tension through tight close-ups of flying balls and splintered shinguards. You watch Chak De! India from time to time for comparison, and while that film had the benefit of a fictionalized ensemble where every character could have their own arc, Soorma has to stick to the messy, non-linear reality of one man's actual life, which means the narrative occasionally lurches sideways into hospital corridors and rehabilitation wards where the pacing completely stalls out.

That stall is caused by the real-life tragedy that hit Sandeep Singh right at his peak, when an accidental gunshot on a train paralyzed him from the waist down just weeks before he was supposed to captain the country at the World Cup. The transition from elite athlete to someone who cannot even sit up without assistance is handled without the usual cinematic gloss, focusing instead on the humiliation of bedpans, muscle atrophy, and the specific brand of useless pity dispensed by visitors who don't know where to look. Dosanjh's performance changes here, losing that casual swagger and replacing it with a blank, hollow stare that tells you the body has quit long before the mind has figured out how to surrender. When he finally gets back on the ice-cream cart wheels of a hospital chair and wheels himself down to the local turf just to watch kids practice, the movie achieves a quiet, devastating power that doesn't need a soaring vocal track to justify itself. It is a messy film that doesn't always know when to cut a scene short or how to balance the sports politics with the domestic melodrama, but it stays anchored by a lead performance that refuses to let the inspirational clichés do the heavy lifting.