Doosra review: 78 minutes of big ideas, but the rebellion is rushed

Two rebellions, one frame

Doosra wants a lot from 78 minutes. Director Abhinay Deo, who earlier made Delhi Belly and Blackmail, cuts between real footage from India’s 2002 NatWest series triumph and a fictional story about Tara, a young woman in a conservative Rajasthani home.

Sourav Ganguly’s shirt-waving celebration at Lord’s becomes the emotional spark: Tara sees a man and a team refusing to play by old rules, and starts asking why her own life is so tightly controlled. The film uses cricket as a metaphor for pushing against patriarchy and other social taboos.

Where the parallel strains

The problem, as the review makes clear, is less the concept than the stitching. The cricket story carries its own built-in drama — old match footage and interviews still land. Tara’s arc, though, has to manufacture that same charge in a short window, and it often gets told rather than shown.

A line in Tara’s voice-over spells out the film’s message: “Marriage is the price men pay for sex, sex is the price women pay for marriage.” It is a punchy line, but a single insight cannot do the work of showing how a person overcomes years of conditioning. Her shift from silent frustration to open rebellion feels hurried, and the consequences of her choices are barely explored.

Strong faces, uneven scaffolding

Plabita Borthakur gives Tara a quiet, believable frustration, and Twisha Joshi is unaffected as the younger Tara. Ankur Vikal plays the father as a man who is caring without letting go of patriarchal beliefs. These performances keep the film watchable, but the writing does not give them enough room.

Technically, Mohammed Rubais’s cinematography makes the contrast between old match footage and the flat, everyday world of Tara’s town work. Editor Ayelet Gil Efrat has the harder job of joining two very different textures, and the cuts between cricket nostalgia and personal drama can jolt. Ram Sampath’s background score does little to warm up key scenes.

What a fuller cut might have done

• Let Tara’s doubt sit on screen before she rebels.
• Replace some voice-over with direct emotional consequences.
• Give the score a clear job in lifting her journey.

At 78 minutes, Doosra is easy to sit through. But a film about freedom, gender and social expectation needs more time to earn its transformation, not just state it.

Bottom line

Fans of cricket nostalgia will find the Lord’s material stirring; fans of character-driven drama may wish Tara’s side of the story had the same weight. Doosra has its heart in the right place, but it reaches further than its short, uneven screenplay can hold. Go for the idea and Borthakur’s performance, with tempered expectations.

Source: India Today