Toofaan

Toofaan is an 2021 Indian Hindi-language sports drama film directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra. It stars Farhan Akhtar, Paresh Rawal, Mrunal Thakur and Hussain Dalal. In the film, Aziz Ali is an orphaned extortionist in Dongri who beats up shopkeepers for money. He gets into a fight and goes to a hospital, where the doctor, Ananya Prabhu criticizes him for being an extortionist and orders him out.

Toofaan premiered on 16 July 2021 on Amazon Prime Video.

Plot
Aziz Ali (Farhan Akhtar) is an orphaned extortionist in Dongri who beats up shopkeepers for money. He gets into a fight and goes to a hospital, where the doctor, Ananya Prabhu (Mrunal Thakur) criticizes him for being an extortionist and orders him out. One day, at a local boxing school, Ali comes across a video of Muhammad Ali and decides to start boxing.

He goes to Coach Narayan "Nana" Prabhu's (Paresh Rawal) boxing school but is defeated in a match because of his lack of technique. Nana is Ananya's father. When Ali visits the hospital again, Ananya is kinder when she learns that he was taking care of and buying gifts for orphaned children, but is shocked upon seeing him rough up a person on the street. She confronts him and asks if he wants to be a boxer or a gangster.

Ali decides to go back to Nana's boxing school after quitting his lifestyle as an extortionist and begins training. Eventually, he earns his boxing license, and starts winning matches, and is dubbed "Toofaan" by Nana. He falls in love with Ananya, and Nana angrily beats him upon finding, believing that Aziz is conning his daughter, due to Aziz, who is a Muslim, being in a relationship with a Hindu. Nana also disowns Ananya and throws her out of his house. Aziz and Ananya start looking for a home but find it difficult to due to their religious differences. The only house that they can stay in requires Aziz to return to his gangster lifestyle for his old boss, which he refuses. Instead, Ananya decides to stay in a women's hostel.

At his next boxing match, Aziz is offered a large sum of money to lose, which he does, but is later caught, and receives a five-year ban. After reconciling with Ananya, they marry, and sometime later, have a child, whom they name Myra. However, Nana stops speaking to Ananya, and does not want anything to do with his grandchild. 5 years later, Aziz is an unfit father to Myra who receives his reinstatement boxing letter, but trashes it as he does not want to return to boxing. After informing Ananya, she goes behind his back and gets his new boxing license.

On the way back, at a train station, a stampede occurs and Ananya dies. Wanting to fulfill Ananya's dream, Aziz returns to boxing and gets back in shape. Meanwhile, Nana begins to spend more time with Myra after Ananya's death. Aziz gets back in shape and wins a few matches, but in one match, the judge, Darmesh Patil (Darshan Kumar), who happens to be a former state champion whom Aziz earlier defeated, bribes the referee, causing Aziz to loose. His opponent performed a series of illegal punches, which the referee did not call out.

Nana visits Patil and secretly records him explaining what had happened. Patil is later fired from the boxing federation and Aziz is reinstated. In the final, Aziz is facing Prithvi Singh (Gaganpreet Sharma), who is known for sending his opponents to hospital before the second round can begin. Aziz starts losing, but Nana comes back to coach him and motivates him to fight for Ananya. In the end, Aziz wins.

Cast

 * Farhan Akhtar as Boxer Aziz "Ajju" Ali
 * Paresh Rawal as Narayan "Nana" Prabhu, Aziz Ali's coach and father-in-law
 * Mrunal Thakur as Dr. Ananya Prabhu Ali, Aziz Ali's wife and Nana's daughter
 * Hussain Dalal as Munna
 * Supriya Pathak as Sister D'Souza
 * Mohan Agashe as Bala Kaka
 * Milind Pathak as Inspector Ramakant Shinde
 * Imran Rashid as Mohsin
 * Deven Khote as Merchant Sir
 * Arhan Chowdary as Parvez
 * Jatin Sapru as Commentator 1 at State Championship
 * RJ Anmol as Commentator 2 at State Championship
 * Akashdeep Sabir as Nirbhay Mallick
 * Gauri Phulka as Myra Sumati Aziz Ali / Tuk Tuk
 * Sahil Patel as Postman Shankar Sayaji Thakur
 * Gaganpreet Sharma as Boxer Prithvi Singh

Special appearances
 * Darshan Kumar as Dharmesh Patil
 * Vijay Raaz as Jaffar Bhai
 * Sonali Kulkarni as Sumati Prabhu, Nana's wife, Ananya's mother and Aziz Ali's mother-in-law
 * Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra as IBF Secretary Anup Verma
 * Salvier Dmello as Nana's Boxer at Club

Production
Filming commenced in Dongri on 26 August 2019 and was completed in March 2020. Darshan Kumar who plays the role of boxer Dharmesh Patil was trained by Hollywood actor Will Smith's trainer Darrell Foster. Boxer Neeraj Goyat, who is himself a professional boxer trained Farhan Akhtar for his role and also acted in the movie.

Release
Earlier the movie screening was announced to be released on 2 October 2020, which coincided with Gandhi Jayanti. However, it got advanced to 18 September 2020, which later on was indefinitely delayed due to COVID-19 pandemic in India. On March 10, 2021 Amazon Prime Video announced that the film would be released on their platform on May 21, but was later postponed after India faced a massive 2nd wave of COVID-19. Finally, the film premiered on 16 July 2021 on Amazon Prime Video.

Reception
Upon release, Toofaan received mixed reviews from the film critics, who praised Akhtar's performance but criticized the screenplay and the predictable plot of the film. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a rating of 50% based on 16 reviews and an average rating of 5.6/10.

Shubhra Gupta from The Indian Express gave Toofan a rating of 3.5/5 and wrote, "Toofaan is your underprivileged-underdog-to-boxing-champion tale whose arc is utterly predictable, but what makes this film such an enjoyable watch is the way it has been written and performed. You know exactly where it will go, but the journey pops with smart feints and jabs, and ends with a satisfying punch". Gautaman Bhaskaran from News 18 wrote "Farhan Akhtar is exceptional first as the Dongri 'Dada' and later as a mellowed lover, but unfortunately, the film clutters its canvas with too many issues". Anna M. M. Vetticad from the Firstpost gave Toofan a rating of 2.75/5 and described the film as "A promising – and long – tale of boxing, Islamophobia and love fizzles out in its third hour".

Soundtrack
The music for the film is composed by Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy, Dub Sharma, Samuel–Akanksha and Daniel Lozinski while the lyrics are written by Javed Akhtar, D'Evil and Manoj Kumar Nath.