Sultan (2016) Review: Haryana Grit, Bollywood Spectacle, Salman in the Ring

Is Sultan worth watching?

Yes, if you like sports melodramas and can live with mass-hero physics. It earns a 59% Celluloid Score from editorial rating (72), Metascore (58), Letterboxd (3.1/5), and IMDb (7/10). The 80% audience snapshot is display-only and is not in the composite. Hindi titles get our reliability pass: Letterboxd and Metascore are weighted above IMDb so fan campaigns cannot inflate the composite.

The Hindi original runs 170 minutes. On Celluloid it sits with Dangal as the other 2016 wrestling event — one a National-Award phenomenon, this one a Salman vehicle with Olympic posters.

A body, a marriage, a second chance

Sultan Ali Khan’s rise, fall, and ring return is structured like a sports movie and scored like a wedding. Anushka Sharma’s Aarfa is the wrestler who makes the gender politics briefly interesting; the film is braver when she is on the mat than when Salman is roaring at the sky. Randeep Hooda’s coach is texture the script underuses.

Two 2016s

Dangal travelled on specificity. Sultan travels on star size. Letterboxd 3.1 and Metascore 58 are why the composite lands at 59% after the reliability pass — just under Recommended, not a peer of Dangal.

Verdict

Crowd-pleasing and long. Watch Dangal first if you can only pick one wrestling film. Details.