Chak De! India

Chak De! India (2007)

चकदे! इंडिया

A team of rag-tag girls with their own agenda form Team India competing for international fame in field hockey. Their coach, the ex-men's Indian National team captain, returns from a life of shame after being unjustly accused of match fixing in his last match. Can he give the girls the motivation required to win, while dealing with the shadows of his own past?

Date of release
2007-08-09
TMDB
7.2 / 10 (400)
Runtime
2h 28m
Genres
Drama
Director
Shimit Amin

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Australia
  • Awards: 24 · Nominations: 26. Including: National Film Award for Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment; Filmfare Award for Best Cinematographer; Filmfare Award for Best Action; Filmfare Award for Best Actor

Chak De! India is a 2007 Indian sports drama film directed by Shimit Amin, written by Jaideep Sahni and produced by Aditya Chopra under the banner of Yash Raj Films. The film stars Shah Rukh Khan as Kabir Khan, the former captain of the India men's national field hockey team. After a disastrous loss to Pakistan, Khan is ostracised from the sport owing to religious prejudice. 7 years later in an attempt to redeem himself, he becomes the coach of the India women's national field hockey team, with the goal of turning its 16 contentious players into an award-winning team.

Production

A brief article about the victorious women's team at the 2002 Commonwealth Games inspired screenwriter Jaideep Sahni to create a film about the Indian women's hockey team, and he modelled Kabir Khan on hockey coach Maharaj Krishan Kaushik. After listening to the storyline Kaushik suggested that Sahani meet hockey player Mir Ranjan Negi, who faced accusations of throwing the match against Pakistan in the 1982 Asian Games.

According to Sahni, he was unaware of Negi's plight while he wrote the script and any resemblance to Negi's life was coincidental. Negi agreed, saying that he did not "want to hog the limelight. This movie is not a documentary of Mir Ranjan Negi's life. It is in fact the story of a team that becomes a winning lot from a bunch of hopeless girls".

Although Salman Khan was initially considered for the lead role, he ultimately declined because the film "was not my genre at that point in time...it was a more serious kind of film and I was doing more of a commercial kind of cinema." Shah Rukh Khan (who had originally declined due to a scheduling conflict with Karan Johar's Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna and Farhan Akhtar's Don) was later confirmed as Kabir Khan.

Casting of the 16 actresses as the hockey players took over six months. Amin described the process as "very, very difficult" and "very strenuous because the requirement was they had to play – and act". A four-month training camp was held where the girls learned the rules of the game, took acting lessons and followed a strict diet; safety precautions were also taken.

Rob Miller was the sport action director, choreographing the sports scenes, and worked with Negi to train the actors. About working with Khan, Negi recalled that everything was planned "including the penalty stroke that SRK missed. That shot alone took us nearly 20 hours as I was keen that it should be very realistic."

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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