Maidaan Review: A Stirring Tribute to the Architect of Indian Football

Is Maidaan Really Based On A True Story, and How Faithfully Does It Honour It?

Maidaan is rooted in one of Indian sport’s most remarkable and most overlooked chapters: the story of Syed Abdul Rahim.

He was a teacher-turned-coach who, against all institutional and financial odds stacked against him, built the Indian football team into an Asian force during the 1950s and early ’60s. Under Rahim, India won Asian Games gold in 1951 and 1962. The team, under his leadership, also delivered a stunning fourth-place finish at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.

What makes Maidaan particularly admirable is how faithfully it captures the texture of that era, especially the bureaucratic stonewalling within the All India Football Federation. From the regional politics that prioritised state loyalties over national merit, to the quiet class war between football as a working-class passion and the establishment’s preference for cricket, the movie covers all aspects with a genuine grace.

Maidaan Director Amit Ravindernath Sharma takes certain dramatic liberties, but the emotional and historical core holds firm. Ajay Devgn’s Maidaan earns its true story tag without apology.

What Does The Maidaan Film Cast Bring To The Field?

The Maidaan film cast is a carefully assembled ensemble, delivering performances that match the story’s scale.

• Ajay Devgn as Syed Abdul Rahim: He commands every scene with stillness, conveying every emotion through his eyes. This is Devgn’s most restrained and wholesome performance.
• Priyamani as Saira Abdul Rahim: Warm, dignified, and quietly devastating, she portrays Rahim’s devoted wife and the emotional anchor of the household. She holds everything together while her husband dedicates himself to the nation.
• Gajraj Rao as Roy Chaudhary: A powerful journalist and institutional force, he opposes Rahim at every turn. His character is menacing, dry, and utterly convincing as an antagonist you quietly seethe at.
• Rudranil Ghosh as Shubhankar: Far from an ally, he is Roy Chaudhary’s petty bureaucratic lackey within the federation, blocking Rahim and promoting regional favouritism over merit.
• Baharul Islam as Anjan: As the federation president, he is the sincere voice in the room, granting Rahim the backing needed to rebuild the team, acting as the film’s quiet conscience amid the politics.

Others enriching the ensemble include Zaheer Mirza, Madhur Mittal, Abhilash Thapliyal, and Manandeep Singh.

How Does Ajay Devgn’s Maidaan Handle Direction, Screenplay, and Visual Craft?

From a filmmaking perspective, Maidaan is divided into two different halves. The first half is richly layered, meticulous in period detail, patient in character-building, and nuanced in its unpacking of Indian sports politics, while the second half is where we see some loopholes.

Director Amit Ravindernath Sharma, best known for directing Badhaai Ho, proves he can operate at a vastly different scale without losing his grip on human emotion. The Maidaan film release date of 10 April 2024 placed it against stiff competition, but its craft was never in question.

The football sequences are the film’s technical crown jewel, bringing to life on-screen the energetic, visceral, and riveting global sports cinema. The period production design of the movie is also immersive and convincing. To add to the whole aesthetic of the movie, we also have A. R. Rahman’s score that precisely perceives when to push and when to pull back.

The screenplay, however, sags a notch in the second half, with a few subplots feeling rushed and some character arcs left unresolved. However, that’s just the mark of a film carrying slightly too much ambition without a lack of craft.

Why Do We Give Maidaan a 4.0 Out of 5 Stars?

In our house, Maidaan earns its rating through genuine excellence in some areas and honest shortcomings in others.

Pros: What the Film Gets Right

• Career-best Devgn: Ajay Devgn delivers a performance that’s restrained, layered, and deeply human.
• Spectacular football sequences: The football sequences are technically rivalling the very best in global sports cinema.
• Rahman at his best: The movie’s soundtrack is an emotionally precise score that adjusts to the tone of the movie.
• Rare sincerity: It honours a forgotten true story from Indian sports history with genuine care and absolutely no exaggeration.

Cons: Where the Film Falls Short

• Sagging second half: The movie loses the narrative tightness and precision of the first-half.
• Bloated runtime: Certain sequences could have been trimmed without a loss to the plot
• Crowd-pleasing climax: It tilts into the territory of crowd-pleasing that undermines the movie’s earlier documentary restraint.

We award Maidaan 4.0 out of 5 stars. It is a film that makes you proud of Indian football, of a forgotten man, even if it has some flaws.

Where Does Maidaan Stand Among Ajay Devgn’s Recent Films at the Box Office?

Ajay Devgn has been one of Bollywood’s most prolific leading men over the last five years, but not every outing of his has been equal at the ticket window. The table below puts Maidaan in direct context with its recent major releases, comparing its various metrics.

The data tells that  Ajay Devgn is at his commercial best when backed by a strong concept (Tanhaji, Drishyam 2). Maidaan, despite being his most ambitious and critically admired project in years, joins a growing list of big-budget misfires. It’s a sobering reminder that quality and commercial success do not always share the same dressing room.

So Why Exactly Is Maidaan a Loss-Making Film Despite Being So Good?

The short answer: It’s a classic case of ambition outpaced by appetite.

Maidaan arrived with a ₹240 crore budget, a number that demands blockbuster-level footfall, but its subject matter was always going to be a difficult sell to a mainstream Bollywood audience.

It’s April 10, 2024, and it came after many delays in the release after the initial announcement, which dwindled the audience’s excitement for a new Ajay Devgn movie by the time it finally released. Not to mention, the release date was untimely, even after so many delays, and placed it in a bruising window, sandwiched between big commercial releases competing for the same multiplex screens.

Maidaan needed to be a cultural phenomenon to break even. It was a critical success, but those rarely translate into box-office miracles in Bollywood, making it a loss-making film at best.

Is the Maidaan Film Review a Recommendation?

Maidaan (2024) is the kind of film Indian cinema needs more of: one that excavates a real, forgotten story from this nation’s sporting archives and turns it into something genuinely stirring.

Ajay Devgn is outstanding in the movie, and A. R. Rahman makes the movie sublime by lending it his melodious creations. Director Amit Ravindernath Sharma scales up the movie’s bar beautifully without losing his instinct for human warmth through its plot.

There is a line Rahim delivers to his players that cuts straight to the bone — “Soch ek, samajh ek, dil ek… is hi liye aaj maidaan mein utarna gyarah… lekin dikhna ek.” It is the film in a single breath. And it is precisely that spirit of collective purpose over individual glory that Maidaan carries from its opening frame to its last.

The Maidaan film review verdict from Inside Box Office is clear: watch it, feel it, and remember the man history forgot.

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