‘The Miranda Brothers’ movie review: Harshvardhan Rane & Meezaan Jafri’s football drama loses the game quickly after it begins

Cast: Harshvardhan Rane, Meezaan Jafri, Rahul Dev

Director: Sanjay Gupta

Language: Hindi

An orphan rescued from trash becomes devoted to his elder brother in a Goan suburb run by a drug gang, both growing to be star footballers - till the suspicious death of their mother threatens to tear them apart. This is how the plot of The Miranda Brothers has been described on IMDb. The moment you read the words orphan and trash, we think of the 70s, we think of Bachchan, and we think of how entertainingly and deeply Salim-Javed and Kader Khan milked this conflict and narrative. But the makers of 2024 are more interested in paying homage to that bygone era, most of them don’t have a voice of their own. It’s more parodical than pure.

Filmmakers like Rohit Shetty and Milap Zaveri have treated their mediocre outings like Dilwale and those Satyameva Jayate movies to the brand of Mammohan Desai, without trying to create their own films. Anyway, director Sanjay Gupta comes up with this film called The Miranda Brothers, which stars a still underutilized Meezaan Jaferi and the stiff Harshvardhan Rane. It also stars Rahul Dev. It’s about the game of football that did a far better job in Maidaan and even Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal. It’s about death, it’s about chaos, it’s about conflict. And it’s all done in a way that it comes undone.

And another problem with today’s stars is how it’s all about bronzed bodies and brawn. So we see ripped muscles of leading men that do nothing to elevate the game or even the story. There’s little thrill to be had when the camera lovingly captures the torsos of the heroes. After a point, their conversations and conflicts become robotic as well, and we wish how we only focused on those abs. Stories like The Miranda Brothers need the kind of vulnerability that can make us empathize with the loss of the characters, but when the prime focus is more on valor, you lose the game the moment it begins, or sometimes, even before.

Rating: 2 (out of 5 stars)

The Miranda Brothers is now streaming on JioCinema