Sultan (2016) Review – Salman Khan’s Most Honest Fight

★★★★☆ Our Rating: 7.5/10

Every sports film is really about two contests. One happens in the arena, in front of a crowd. The other happens quietly, inside a person who has to decide whether getting up again is worth the pain. Sultan understands that second contest better than most Bollywood sports dramas, and that is why it still connects nearly a decade after its Eid release in 2016.

On paper, the ingredients look familiar: a talented wrestler from Haryana, a love story, a fall caused by pride, and a comeback against younger, fitter opponents. We have seen versions of this arc before. What lifts Sultan is the way it treats failure as something ordinary and humiliating rather than heroic, and the way its leading man allows himself to look tired, heavy and broken for long stretches of the film. Salman Khan has built a career on invincibility. Here, his character loses almost everything that matters, and the film does not rush to give it back.

Is it also too long, too predictable in places, and too fond of slow-motion entries? Yes, and we will not pretend otherwise. In this review we give you an honest breakdown of the story, performances, direction, music and box office, so you can decide whether this comeback deserves your time.

Quick Facts: Sultan at a Glance

The Story: Pride, Loss and One Last Reason to Fight (Spoiler-Free)

Sultan Ali Khan is a former wrestling champion now living a small, forgettable life in a Haryana town. In his youth, he was not chasing fame. He was an aimless young man who fell for Aarfa, a determined wrestler with clear ambitions of her own. To earn her respect, he trained seriously for the first time, discovered a real gift for the sport, and rose with startling speed from local mud pits to national and international podiums. Aarfa and Sultan built a life together as both partners and athletes.

Success, however, changes him. Applause feeds his arrogance, he begins to treat the people closest to him as if they exist in his shadow, and a personal tragedy shatters the family he had taken for granted. Sultan walks away from wrestling completely, carrying guilt he cannot discuss and a body that slowly reflects years of neglect.

Years later, an opportunity arrives from an unexpected place. Aakash Oberoi, who runs a struggling mixed martial arts league, needs an Indian fighter the crowd will believe in. He believes the forgotten champion could be that draw. Sultan has no interest in glory anymore, but he has a private, urgent reason to need prize money, connected to the loss that ended his career. Accepting means learning a new fighting style at an age when most wrestlers have retired, under a blunt coach who has no patience for self-pity.

The film moves between past and present, showing us the gifted young Sultan and the man he became, and asking whether discipline can return to someone who let it go so completely. We will not spoil the outcome of his final fights or the personal reckoning that runs alongside them.

Performances: Effort You Can See on Screen

Salman Khan as Sultan Ali Khan: This is among the most committed performances of Khan’s career. He trained visibly for the wrestling and MMA sequences, gained and carried weight for the fallen phase of the character, and, crucially, lets Sultan look ashamed. In the quieter scenes, at home, facing Aarfa, or staring at a life that has shrunk, he underplays in a way his larger-than-life roles rarely allow. His Haryanvi accent is not flawless, but the physical and emotional effort is genuine, and the audience responds to that honesty.

Anushka Sharma as Aarfa: Aarfa is written as more than motivation for the hero. She is a wrestler with her own medal dreams, a sharp tongue and a clear sense of self-worth. Sharma brings energy and dignity to the role, particularly in the early training sequences and in a difficult later stretch where Aarfa must hold a family together while grieving herself. If the film has a weakness here, it is the script’s, not hers: after a point, Aarfa’s own sporting ambitions are set aside to serve Sultan’s story.

Randeep Hooda as Fateh Singh: Hooda appears as the coach who takes on the older, unfit Sultan, and he makes an immediate impact with very economical acting. Dry, unsentimental and funny without trying to be, he gives the comeback section its steel. Amit Sadh as Aakash is sincere as the league founder who moves from seeing Sultan as a marketing idea to genuinely backing him, while Kumud Mishra as Aarfa’s father provides a steady, believable presence in the early portions.

Direction and Technical Craft

Ali Abbas Zafar, who also wrote the film, directs with a clear affection for Haryana’s wrestling culture. The akhara scenes, the mud, the early-morning training, the local tournaments with their noisy crowds, all feel observed rather than decorated. Cinematographer Artur Zurawski shoots the wrestling bouts with a grounded texture, using natural light in the village sections and a harder, more commercial look for the MMA arena, which visually separates Sultan’s two worlds.

The action choreography is one of the film’s strengths. Traditional pehlwani holds and throws are shown with respect, and the MMA fights, while inevitably dramatised, convey weight and exhaustion. Sultan does not glide through opponents. He bleeds, tires and survives rounds, which keeps the comeback plausible within the film’s emotional logic.

Editing by Rameshwar S. Bhagat keeps the flashback structure clear, but the film’s 170-minute length is its most obvious technical problem. The middle section repeats emotional beats, and a couple of songs extend scenes that had already made their point. A tighter cut of about twenty minutes would have sharpened the second half considerably. The production design and costume work are strong throughout, tracking Sultan’s changing body and status without turning the transformation into a gimmick.

Music and Background Score

Vishal–Shekhar composed the songs, with Irshad Kamil’s lyrics and Julius Packiam providing the background score. It is one of the more effective Bollywood sports albums of its period because the songs are tied closely to stages of Sultan’s journey.

“Jag Ghoomeya” is the standout, a tender expression of devotion that works in both its versions and has remained popular long after release. “Baby Ko Bass Pasand Hai” brings the celebratory energy of the early romance and wedding phase, colourful and unapologetically commercial. The title track, “Sultan”, functions as a training and arena anthem, built to raise the pulse before a bout, while “440 Volt” adds lightness to the courtship.

Packiam’s score is used intelligently in the fights, rising without drowning out the sound of the arena itself: the crowd, the referee, the thud of bodies on the mat. In the domestic drama sections, the music occasionally leans towards melodrama, underlining feelings the actors had already conveyed. Even with that reservation, the soundtrack is a clear asset and a significant reason the film’s emotional peaks land as well as they do.

What Works and What Doesn’t

What we loved:

• Salman Khan’s physically committed and emotionally restrained central performance
• Authentic-feeling akhara and Haryana setting, with well-shot wrestling sequences
• A comeback story driven by guilt and a concrete personal reason, not just medals
• A strong, memorable soundtrack where most songs serve the story

What could be better:

• At 170 minutes, the film is noticeably overlong, especially in the middle
• The broad arc is predictable, following the sports-drama template closely
• Aarfa’s own ambitions as an athlete are sidelined after she becomes Sultan’s wife

Box Office: An Eid Blockbuster

Released worldwide on 6 July 2016, timed for Eid, Sultan became one of the biggest Hindi hits of its year. Produced on a reported budget of ₹90 crore, it grossed an estimated ₹623.33 crore worldwide. That figure placed it among the highest-grossing Indian films of all time at the point of release, and it held that standing for a considerable period afterwards.

The opening was predictably huge given the festival timing and Khan’s following, but the film’s legs were more impressive than its start. Family audiences returned through the second and third weeks, helped by the emotional story and the popular music. It also performed strongly overseas, where sports dramas do not always travel as well as romances, and a later release in China in 2018 added a further, smaller contribution to its total.

In commercial terms, Sultan confirmed that a star vehicle built around a demanding physical transformation and a grounded setting could compete with glossier, city-based spectacles. It remains one of the defining successes of Salman Khan’s 2010s run.

Verdict: Should You Watch It?

Sultan does not reinvent the sports film, and it asks for a lot of your time. What it offers in return is sincerity. The sweat looks real, the central loss is treated with weight, and the hero is allowed to be wrong, arrogant and broken before he is allowed to fight again. For viewers who enjoy underdog stories and for anyone curious to see Salman Khan stretch beyond his comfort zone, it is well worth watching, ideally in one sitting with the interval as your only break.

Our rating: 7.5/10 — An overlong but heartfelt wrestling drama carried by its lead performance and its music.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Sultan based on a true story?
No. Sultan Ali Khan is a fictional character created for the film. The wrestling culture, training methods and tournament world shown are inspired by real pehlwani traditions in Haryana, but Sultan’s life story is not a biography.

Is there a sequel to Sultan?
No sequel has been released. Despite the film’s large box office success, the makers have not produced a Sultan 2, and the story ends in a way that works as a complete arc.

What language is Sultan in and are subtitles available?
The film is in Hindi with a strong Haryanvi flavour in much of the dialogue. Licensed home versions generally include English subtitles, which are helpful if you are unfamiliar with the dialect.

Where can I watch Sultan?
Streaming rights move between services over time. Search major licensed streaming platforms and official digital stores in your country for Sultan (2016), and choose a legal source.

What is the runtime and age rating?
The film runs 170 minutes and was certified U/A in India. It contains intense wrestling and MMA fight scenes but no graphic gore, making it suitable for most family viewing with guidance for younger children.