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Thursday, November 20, 2008Shiva Ka Insaaf Release Year: 1985Country: India Starring: Jackie Shroff, Shakti Kapoor, Poonam Dhillon, Vinod Mehra, Mazhar Khan, Parikshat Sahni, Gulshan Grover, Birbal, Satish Kaul, Nandita Thakur Writers: Ravi Kapoor, Mohan Kaul, Kader Khan Director: Raj N. Sippy Cinematographer: Ashok Mehta Music: R.D Burman Producer: Romu N. Sippy Until the mid eighties, the costumed superhero as we know him in the West was a figure largely absent from Indian cinema. The primary exceptions were those intermittent attempts to appropriate the Superman character that seem to dot the history of modern South Asian film, such as the competing attempts by directors Mohammed Hussain and Manmohan Sabir, Superman and Return of Mr. Superman, which were both released in 1960 and , curiously, starred the same actor, Jairaj, in the title role. Yet in the neon decade the industry seemed to see something of a mini renaissance in the appearance of such characters. Superstar Amitabh Bachchan's attempts to revive his career after his less-than-stellar turn in Indian politics, perhaps by way of overcompensation, included not one, but two portrayals of uber-abled caped crusaders, first in the relatively well received Shahenshah and then in the dreadful Toofan. In addition, 1987 saw yet another pass at the Man of Steel in the form of the infamous Superman, aka Indian Superman. And, most famously, there was that same year's mega-hit, Mr. India, in which Anil Kapoor portrayed a humble citizen who, granted the ability to become invisible at will, used his powers to defeat the enemies of his country. But before all of these there came another film based around the exploits of a costumed hero of superhuman abilities, 1985's Shiva Ka Insaaf.     The absence of traditional superheroes in Bollywood up to this point might well be explained by the fact that, despite that absence, the nation's screens saw no shortage of colorful figures fighting for the cause of justice and virtue with the aid of superhuman powers. These figures appeared in those films known as "Mythologicals", a staple of Indian cinema since its very inception, based on the religious epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Indeed, even Hollywood might have seen religious-based films become more of a staple genre had the tracts of Western religion been populated by such fanciful deities as the monkey god Hanuman, a fearless and cheekily charismatic hero who in modern times has even proven himself worthy of fighting alongside Ultraman. In fact, when, in the 1960s, India began to produce its own indigenous comic books, it was the heroes of the Ramayana and Mahabharata that featured in their pages. This is not to say that comics had not been produced in the country prior to that, but up to that time they had only been comprised of reprints of popular Western comics, such as Mandrake the Magician, Lee Falk's The Phantom, and, of course, Superman. It was only in the 1970s that bona fide and uniquely Indian superheroes began to see print, and it is perhaps due to those characters gradually making their way into the larger public consciousness that we saw films such as those mentioned above being released in the following decade. Still, the connection between India's superheroes and its cherished religious figures remained strong, as many of these films clearly evidence. In Toofan for instance, Amitabh's character is granted his powers by Hanuman, and in Shiva Ka Insaaf, our hero, Shiva, derives his powers from... well, the name pretty much says it all. (This practice can be seen even in more recent Bollywood superhero films, such as 2006's Krrish, in which the hero derives his name from that of Krishna.)     It was not the presence of a masked superhero alone upon which the movie Shiva Ka Insaaf depended for its novelty, however. The film is, in fact, sometimes mistakenly identified as being India's first film made in 3D, though that honor actually goes to 1984's My Dear Kuttichaathan, an enormously popular children's fantasy shot in the Malayalam language. Still, Shiva Ka Insaaf followed hot on the heels on My Dear Kuttichaathan, and can -- and did -- rightfully make the claim to being the first Hindi film shot in 3D. In India, the 3D process ran pretty much the same course that it does periodically throughout the rest of the world, making a big initial splash. which, in turn, inspired a short run of increasingly less successful films trumpeting its use (which included, in addition to Shiva Ka Insaaf, Indian cheapy horror maestros the Ramsay Brothers' 3D Saamri, aka Purana Mandir 2) before the industry abandoned it due to its financial returns not justifying the added expense of labor and capital that it required. In keeping with that familiar trend, Shiva Ka Insaaf contains within it all of those gimmicks that you'd expect from a movie riding a brief wave of 3D-mania, loaded with "gotcha" moments in which all manner of things are thrust at the camera in the hope of inspiring startled gasps on the part of the audience. Shiva Ka Insaaf features as its titular hero the actor Jackie Shroff, at the time a freshly-minted superstar thanks to his lead role in the blockbuster hit Hero the previous year. I have to admit that, prior to seeing Shiva Ka Insaaf, I had only seen Shroff in films of more recent vintage, and, while he has obviously aged into a beefy and appropriately craggy-faced picture of Bollywood machismo in the interim, it was shocking to see him here so fresh-faced and comparatively scrawny. Even his mustache looked undernourished to me. And, when suited up as Shiva, his heroic demeanor is undermined by a comportment that I can only describe as being a bit on the slouchy side. Of course, as many movie stars throughout the world have had the sad opportunity to learn, superhero movies, with their frequently ridiculous-looking costumes and over-hyped expectations, are an invitation for unflattering comparisons. We can't all be John Phillip Law in Diabolik, after all. In fact, none of us can, save John Phillip Law -- and God help the poor, pear-shaped everyman who tries to pour himself into a painted-on leather catsuit to prove otherwise. So simply add Shroff to the long line of thespians whose run-in with a form-fitting, head-to-toe leather superhero uniform left them looking more deflated than ennobled.     Anyone who has watched a lot of Bollywood action films knows that in them the parents of young boys are something of an endangered species, and that, if a pair of them are introduced during the first five minutes, odds are pretty high that they will soon be gunned down by a cackling villain while little Junior watches from some hiding place he's squirreled himself away in. Now, I've seen enough Spaghetti Westerns to know that this particular trope is not the exclusive property of Indian cinema, but it is only in Bollywood that it sees such steady repetition as to seem like the observance of some kind of ritual. In any case, Shiva Ka Insaaf makes admirably short work of this set-up, seeing that little Bhola's lawyer father and doting mother are dispatched by the ruthless bandit Jagan (Shakti Kapoor) within mere minutes of the opening credits. Of course, from his hiding place, Bhola can only see the telltale scar on Jagan's hand as these vicious acts play out, and thus are the seeds of vengeance and its lifelong pursuit sown. With his dying breath, Bhola's father tells the boy to seek out one of three men -- the names and photographs of whom are provided in a diary he keeps -- to take him in and give him a proper upbringing. Fortunately for Bhola, it turns out that all three men -- whose relation to Bhola's dad is never made clear -- live under one roof, Full House style. These men are Ram, Robert and Rahim (Vinod Mehra, Parikshat Sahni and Mazhar Khan), whose names echo the idealized vision of harmony between Hindu, Catholic and Muslim seen in numerous masala films -- especially those directed by Manmohan Desai, such as, most famously, Amar Akbar Anthony. Perhaps what unites Uncles Ram, Robert and Rahim, despite their different faiths, is the fact that they are all hirsute macho men and that each, in his own way, is a raging badass. To illustrate this, we are shown a series of vignettes, the first of which shows Ram wielding his fists and a pair of bamboo sticks that he uses like nunchucks with fearsome effectiveness, sending a bad guy flying through a wall and leaving a perfect man-shaped hole in his wake. Next we see Robert practicing a unique skill in which he launches little metal balls -- directly at the camera, naturally -- from little cups located on the tips of his shoes, hitting his targets with startling accuracy. Finally Rahim demonstrates that he is very good with a whip. All three, it seems, are ideal candidates to prime Bhola for the task of avenging his parents' deaths, and so follows a training montage taken directly from a Liu Chia-Liang movie (seriously, Bhola even has to run across those floating logs like in 36 Chambers of Shaolin), during which Bhola goes from being portrayed by a child actor to being portrayed by twenty-eight-year-old Jackie Shroff, despite the fact that his adopted uncles only age in that typically Bollywood, mild-graying-at-the-temples way.     Finally, Bhola's uncles take him to a temple to the god Shiva, where they bestow upon him his leather-heavy costume, a ring in the shape of Shiva's third eye (all the better to leave a distinctive mark on those he punches) and a replica of Shiva's weapon, the trishul -- or trident -- which he is to use to announce his arrival, striking terror into the hearts of those evildoers who are about to be on the receiving end of his wrath. At this, an eerie wind sweeps through the shrine, and his uncles tell him that the power he will be wielding will not be his own, but rather that of Shiva working through him. Now, whether this means that Bhola is now blessed with superpowers is unclear, as most of the crimefighting abilities he will display from this point on are in the form of the type of exaggerated punching and leaping around that we normally see from Indian action heroes -- only in their case without them being burdened with masks, capes and constricting head-to-toe leather uniforms -- though there are a couple of instances in which it appears that Bhola/Shiva can fly. Whatever his abilities may be, however, there is no doubt in my mind that Bhola/Shiva's most super power of all is his poetic way with a mortal threat, aided greatly by the fact that, whenever he puts on his costume, his voice automatically becomes equipped with its own echo unit. Thus is made even more grimly authoritative such pronouncements as "I will make you writhe so much that death will shiver looking at you." Or when, on another occasion, while trying to extract information from a recalcitrant goon, he intones ominously, "Even if Shiva goes to a cemetery, the corpses there get up and tell their names and addresses." Still, while generally a man of few words, Shiva does at times prove long-winded, as you'll no doubt find after hearing his little introductory speech being delivered for the umpteenth time. This, in response to his prey's panicked queries as to his identity, goes as follows: "The breeze that will extinguish the fire of injustice... The cure to poor men's pains... I am Shiva!"     Given the typically intricate plotting of Bollywood films, you might think of my above summarization of Shiva Ka Insaaf''s first act as being somewhat glib. But Shiva Ka Insaaf is far from typical in that regard, and shows an economy in its approach to storytelling that, unless you consider the circumstances, is a little surprising. Few Indian films of its era clock in, as Shiva does, at a mere two hours, but I imagine that this truncated length represents an attempt on the part of its producers to limit, to some extent, the expenses and technical complications involved in filming a movie in 3D. The resulting need to cram all of its business into what, to its makers, must have seemed like a very brief running time leads to a narrative that is uncharacteristically lean, and free of those many subplots and parallel storylines that make up the normal masala film. Now, I'd be lying if I said I didn't think the film could benefit from the introduction of some of those elements, but we should perhaps be grateful for what we have. After all, director Raj N. Sippy might not have been able to integrate those disparate elements as expertly as, say, Shekhar Kapur did with Mr. India, and we might have instead ended up with something as sprawling and unfocused as Toofan, a superhero movie so overburdened with plot that its superhero ends up being crowded off-screen for most of its length. Shiva Ka Insaaf may indeed boast a story that is little more than rote superhero boilerplate, but, as a frequent viewer of Indian films, I have to confess that it's nice to on occasion be let off easy: to part ways with a film after a non seat-numbing investment of time and without having to have kept track of all of its characters and tangents by way of copious notes. Anyway, with Bhola's superheroic transformation now complete, his uncles determine that it is time for him to go to The Big City, for that is where they have determined his parents' killer has migrated, despite them having no clue as to his identity. (Hey, my praising the movie's brevity doesn't mean that it doesn't sometimes come at the expense of sense.) To this end, they provide him with an entre to a job at a big city newspaper, where he is to work in the guise of a bespectacled, mild mannered reporter. Mind you, Jackie Shroff's take on this oft-essayed role ends up being an insult to bespectacled, mild-mannered reporters everywhere, as it involves a stuttering caricature of simple-mindedness and social retardation that borders on cretinism. Still, this somehow does not prevent the newspaper's beautiful female editor, Rekha (Poonam Dhillon) from giving him a job, thus setting us up for the inevitable triangle between Bhola, who falls hard for Rekha, and Rekha, who ends up falling even harder for Shiva. Now, as to the root of Rekha's attraction, I'd love to quote Batman and say "It's the car", but Shiva doesn't even have one, as evidenced in a later chase scene where he takes after a carload of thugs on a bicycle. (One article that I read about this film, written by a South Asian writer, cited this scene as singling out Shiva as being the most Indian of superheroes.) Must be the leather, then.     Meanwhile, we find that the intervening years have seen considerable upward mobility on the part of our old friend Jagan, as his relocation to the city has been accompanied by a transformation from grubby, scarf-wearing dacoit to white-suited, highball-swilling underworld kingpin, and has in turn necessitated him being re-christened with the cryptic but suitably sophisticated-sounding appellation "The Doctor". (No, he doesn't have a Tardis. Nerd.) Once Shiva has made his presence known around town, striking the appropriate amount of fear into its criminal underbelly, Jagan and his son, Vikram (Gulshan Grover), take it as their first order of business to eliminate him. And so begins the series of free-wheeling, violent encounters between Shiva and Jagan's army of goons that are essentially the very type of business you would presumably be watching a movie like Shiva Ka Insaaf for in the first place. And, unless you have expectations of gritty realism, you shouldn't be disappointed, as these scenes come replete with loads of unnecessary acrobatics, loudly resounding punches thrown directly at the camera, and Shiva skewering his adversaries with little mini trishuls that he throws with deadly accuracy. One of these aforementioned action set pieces involves Shiva being lured by Jagan's men to a warehouse filled with packing crates, where they then try to kill him by running him over with their cars. Inserted, at certain points, into the footage of real cars crashing through stacks of real crates -- I'm guessing, in order to somehow achieve the desired 3D effect -- are poorly matched shots of what are obviously toy cars crashing through stacks of miniature crates, which then fly out toward the camera. In like fashion, during the fight that ensues, whenever one of Jagan's henchmen is hurled or falls from the rafters, it is represented by an -- again, very obvious and, by all appearances, pocket-sized -- doll being dropped onto the camera. These are both pretty typical examples of the caliber of miniature work you see in older Bollywood movies -- going back as far as such methods were employed and extending forward to as late as the mid-nineties -- and it's something that, by virtue of its naive charms, I've found myself becoming completely obsessed with. Nothing makes me happier these days than to be watching some old Indian movie and suddenly see a scene such as those that I've described above play across the screen, and the shoddier it looks, the better.     I should point out, however, that the crudeness of those effects is not due to them being primitive by necessity. It wouldn't have required that much greater of an expenditure of cash or resources, if any, to make those models slightly more detailed, or to film them from an angle that would have created an illusion of scale. Nor, in my opinion, is it a matter of Bollywood effects crews of the day simply being inept. Rather, it's the result, I think, of a particular approach to special effects that puts less of a premium on realism, preferring instead to simply suggest the thing represented, while letting the effect itself be seen by the audience for the ingenious bit of trickery that it is. It's a self referential form of movie magic that, by its very obviousness, invites the audience to be gleeful participants in their own deception. It also both exemplifies and enables that promise of escape into a totally fabricated reality that, for many of us, makes Indian commercial cinema so irresistible. As for Shiva Ka Insaaf's most important special effect -- that is, its attempted illusion of three dimensionality -- I cannot offer an evaluation. The only way the movie can be viewed these days is in the stubbornly two dimensional format of cheapo Indian DVD, and, even if it were to generate enough interest to merit a screen revival in all its intended glory, that wouldn't be likely to occur on my shores. Still, anyone attempting to watch the movie even in its current format will do best to be advised of its origins, otherwise the near constant thrusting and hurling of objects into the camera with little or no narrative justification will prove pretty perplexing.     For myself, what was most interesting about all of that was how, unlike other 3D movies that I've seen, in which the effect was generally used to provoke in the audience a feeling of physical threat (ooh, watch out for that ping pong ball!), Shiva ka Insaaf is just as likely to tease its audience with temptation. There are any number of nasty looking weapons brandished at the viewer, but he or she is just as often -- or even more often -- tantalized with the offer of a plateful of tasty looking food, a handful of candy, or even a fistful of cash. When you consider that the majority of the film's audience would have come from the lower economic strata of Indian society, you have to wonder if Shiva Ka Insaaf didn't perhaps cross some line beyond Bollywood's mandate to provide wish fulfillment and enter territory where it could have been perceived as taunting, or even cruel. Still, I have to admit that the first thing that came to mind upon seeing one of those handfuls of colorful sweets being launched toward my face was the image of a theater full of shrieking kids joyfully leaping with arms outstretched toward the screen. And I imagine any parent would feel safe letting their child accept candy from Shiva ka Insaaf, as, aside from a couple of bloody moments and a very well-placed use of the word "shit" by Gulshan Grover, it's decidedly kid friendly. The drama never gets too intense, the overall look is bathed in that inimitable bright 1980s glow, and the score happily percolates with songs by R.D. Burman at his most lightweight and catchy. In other words, The Dark Knight this is not, and if you're looking for depth, you should have seen it when it was in 3D. However, if you're in the mood for some good-natured, if unremarkable, costumed horseplay with that ineffable whiff of spice peculiar to Bollywood, you could do much worse. Labels: Action: Superheroes, Bollywood, Stars: Jackie Shroff, Year: 1985 posted by Todd at 9:56 AM | 13 Comments Saazish Release Year: 1975Country: India Starring: Dharmendra, Saira Banu, Dev Kumar, Helen, David Abraham, Paintal, Madan Puri. Writer: Ranjan Bose, Ramesh Pant Director: Kalidas Music: Jaikishan Dayabhai Pankal, Shankarsinh Raghuwanshi Producer: Kalidas At some point, online emoticon technology will advance to the point where there is a little smiley face thing that perfectly expresses the sentiment of me shaking my fist toward the heavens and yelling, "Dharmendra!!!" And when that technology exists, I will insert it into this and several other reviews, because it seems like every time I pick some weird subgenre of exploitation film to find a Bollywood version of, when I find it, it ends up starring Dharmendra and being sort of disappointing. Take, for example, my long quest to find a Bruce Lee exploitation film from Bollywood. Eventually it turned up in the form of Katilon Ke Kaatil, starring Dharmendra and well-known Bruce Lee impersonator Bruce Le. It also ended up being sort of disappointing, even though, in addition to a showdown with Bruce Le, it also featured Dharmendra fighting a sasquatch dressed as General Ursus from the Planet of the Apes movies. I know, I know. I too thought there was no way a movie featuring those ingredients -- not to mention Dharmendra in drag -- could be disappointing, and while Katilon Ke Kaatil is well worth watching, it also managed to let me down a little. This is probably unfair. I don't know why I assumed a Bruce Lee exploitation film from Bollywood would somehow be awesome when almost every other Bruce Lee exploitation film was crappy. In the end, though, it was a decent enough movie, with lots of fist fights and guys getting punched through random piles of bricks.
Similarly, I've been on an even longer quest to find the movie Saazish, though for a long time I didn't know the name of the movie for which I was searching. You see, way back when, or at least several years ago, there was a mini-explosion of interest in Bollywood music outside fo the Indian community. This was happening mostly amongst club DJs from the UK and continental Europe, some with Indian backgrounds, others without, but all interested in mining the rich vein of breakbeats present in the ultra-funky, ultra-swanky Bollywood music of the 60s and 70s. The end result for those of us who weren't European club DJs was a series of CD releases of dubious copyright legality from various labels documenting the music that had become suddenly so popular in modern dancehalls and discotheques. This coincided with a curious surge of Hollywood stars claiming to love Bollywood and want to do a Bollywood picture. Most of that ended up being "jump on the bandwagon" bullshit, though. The closest anyone came to making good on the lip service was Will Smith, who at least showed up on whatever they call American Idol in India (umm, my guess is Hindustani Idol) to sing and pal around with the judges. The flare-up of Bollywood awareness in American pop culture even seeped into such strange places as rap music, when several stars used Bollywood breaks for their songs (including the fine rump shaker "Shake Ya Bum Bum" -- that's right! I know Li'l Kim songs), and the inexplicable use of "Chaiyya Chaiiya" from Dil Se as the theme song to Spike Lee's Inside Man. The whole thing only lasted about a year -- a little longer in the club scene -- but it was fun at the time. And we got some cool CDs out of it. One of the coolest was "Bombay the Hard Way," from Motel Records. It was a mix of music from masala action films of the 1970s. Some were remixed. Others, like the theme from Don, the DJs knew better than to mess with and so are presented in their original, unaltered form. This CD was the reason I ever bothered to start exploring the world of Bollywood action films. Around the same time, Pete Tombs' Mondo Macabro book came out with chapters on Indian horror and fantasy films, and while that was also a major impetus as well, it was the bad-ass theme song from Don that really convinced me to set my sights on the sub-continent.
Not too long after, Motel Records came out with a second volume, called "Bombay 2: Electric Vindaloo." On the cover of the CD were a number of screenshots, one of which featured a dude with a blue head and a Mandarin-collared jacket. He wasn't doing anything special, other than just standing there, but I guess if you are a guy with a blue head and a Blofeld jacket, you don't have to do much on top of that to be special. I recognized him instantly as Fantomas, or some Bollywood variant thereof, though it took a little longer for the reality of the matter so sink in: somewhere out there was a Bollywood Fantomas film. I should probably save a full history of Fantomas for a review of an an actual Fantomas film, but as fate would have it, I'm getting to this movie before any of those, so some introductions is in order. To do that, we have to travel back in time a little bit to the golden age of pulp fiction, when the pages of fantastically lurid adventure magazines were filled with the exploits of men like The Shadow, The Spider, Doc Savage, and Fantomas. Tracing the origins of modern pulp fiction can be tricky, and most claims one makes are instantly debatable. But for a lazy man like me who likes to make wild shit up off the top of his head and pass it off as research, it goes something like this: in the beginning, or at least in 1844, there was The Count of Monte Cristo. You could argue that The Odyssey was the first true work of pulp fiction, but then, you can argue pretty much everything, so for the sake of brevity, let's start this particular timeline with Dumas' thrilling tale of a guy who learns to be the most super-duper cool guy in the universe, then uses his newfound skills to mess with people who pissed him off. Dantes becomes a master of disguise, a master fencer, master boxer, and thanks to a fortuitous turn of events while unjustly imprisoned, has a veritably inexhaustible amount of wealth to finance his many exploits. It's a pretty good book, and if you haven't read it, you really should. Or at least pick up the "Illustrated Classics" mini-version or something. In the character of Edmond Dantes, it's easy to find a number of traits that would find their way into the many pulp and comic book characters of the early 20th century. Heck, Batman's Bruce Wayne is basically just Dantes without an accent mark in his name. In 1907, as the pulp era was getting into the swing of things, France was introduced to the character of Arsene Lupin. Lupin was the classic gentleman thief, a character archetype that would be reincarnated over and over again in such varied forms as The Saint, that movie where Cary Grant steals stuff, the guys from both generations of Oceans 13, and of course, that delightful Hans Gruber. Like many film fans, I delight in the stereotype of the gentleman thief, though in my darker hours, I wonder how many gentleman thieves there have actually been through the ages. I think the era of gentlemanly thievery may have passed when thieves stopped stealing precious jewels and works of art and started stealing credit cards and social security numbers. I mean, you can't steal someone's credit card number, then rakishly hop up onto a window sill, shout "Tally ho!" as you give them a jaunty little salute, and swing out the window on your grappling hook. Things were just more fun when "identity theft" meant the thief donned a fake handlebar mustache, adopted a phony German accent, and sold himself in high society circles as Baron Ascot Von Fancypants, heir to the Fancypants fortune. Into the mix, round about 1911 or so, came Fantomas, another French master thief and master of disguise. Like Lupin, Fantomas immediately caught on with the public, and a huge number of Fantomas stories were published throughout the early 20th century.
The pulps were full of similar outlandish characters. Some were heroes, some were lovable rascals. A few were actual villains. Pretty much all of them had skills beyond those of us average chumps. It wasn't long, then, until such characters found themselves parading across the relatively new medium of the motion picture. In serials and shorts, most of the pulp heroes and villains started showing up on movie screens. The ruler of the roost at the time was the creation of German director Fritz Lang. His name was Dr. Mabuse, and the inspiration behind that character seemed to be the question, "What if a guy had all that awesome cunning and intellect of the heroes of Dumas and the pulps, but he was a total dick?" I have yet to see the silent era Fantomas films, but I'm working on it. So until then, let's skip ahead. World War I. Weimar Republic. Jesse Owens, World War II. Comic books. Captain America punches Hitler. My grandpa Harley starts thinking Truman is a jackass. That should bring us up to the 1960s, right? So after a period of hibernation, the pulp characters of the early half of the 20th century are suddenly resurrected in the form of Italian and French comic book -- or fumetti -- characters and films based upon those characters. In the interim, the United states had been the stewards of the pulp characters, sustaining them largely through radio dramas and comic books. In American comic books, however, the bad guy was usually the bad guy, and the good guy was the good guy. There were very few anti-heroes, and even Batman was smiley and joking around while fighting guys like that cat who put pennies in people's ears. In the 1960s, however, Italy took over with a splashy, much more adult-oriented blending of old pulps with the wildly popular James Bond books and movies. The results were fumetti, and guys like Diabolik and Kriminal ran wild. The big difference this time around was that while the old pulps had been split pretty evenly between heroes and villains, and American comic books from the era always sided with the good guys, this new breed -- nourished as it was on the growing counter-culture distrust of authority figures -- saw the villain as hero. Diabolik, for example, would murder and steal to get what he wanted, but we still rooted for him because he was just so much cooler than the square authority figures around him -- and that includes squares on both sides of the law. It was only natural that someone would revive Fantomas and translate him into the modern jet-set, Eurospy style of film. A series of French films were thus commissioned starring the mysterious master criminal behind an expressionless blue mask. As with other films of the era, Fantomas is nominally the "bad guy," but it's never in doubt that we are rooting for him rather than the police. This time, Fantomas had an awesome underground layer, expertly designed and decorated as all 1960s villain lairs were, and a cool car. It's not surprising that such an iconic figure would be "borrowed" for productions in other countries. Thus, Fantomas appears in flagrant violation of copyright law in the 1969 Turkish film Iron Claw, The Pirate. He would show up again in 1975's Saazish, matching wits with Dharmendra, and eventually winding up as a screencap on the cover of a CD.
The problem when I got the CD was that I knew immediately I wanted to see the film, but nowhere in the CD packaging did they credit the movie from which the shot was taken. Since most of these CDs were released by one-off labels who disappeared shortly after issuing the album, Motel Records was gone by the time I contacted them to see if they could shed any light on the topic. I turned then to the Internet, but after a few years of asking about "that blue headed guy on the cover of Bombay 2: Electric Vindaloo," I'd received nothing but suggestions that turned out to be dead ends. At the time, the coverage of these types of films was considerably thinner than it is today. Well-written resources on Bollywood film were hard to find, and those that did exist concentrated almost entirely on new films or old dramas and romantic comedies. A few years ago, though, a number of sites began cropping up that were more willing to explore the battier side of Bollywood, thanks in large part to such films becoming more readily available on DVD. This meant a whole new generation could rediscover films that, even if they'd been wildly popular at one point, had lapsed into obscurity since then on account of there being no medium other than the theater in which to see them. It also helped that coverage of Bollywood films was expanding outside the boundaries of India. This is not meant as a slight on India or on Indian film historians. But when you are in the thick of something, you tend to tire of things much faster than people who are coming to the game with new eyes. Academics concentrate on the "important" films. Working film writers within India were there to write about current films and scandals. Neither population has much vested interest in dusting off memories of a movie where Dharmendra jumps a horse over a castle wall. Covering goofball exploitation films has always been the domain of dedicated fans and niche professionals, and until recently, many such fans in India did not have the means to see the films or communicate to others about them. The culture for supporting this sort of "scholarship" has existed primarily in the United States, Europe, and Japan, where the means of producing fanzines and organizing clubs was more readily available, and where the concept of films -- even the bad ones -- as something to be preserved rather than consumed and destroyed to make way for next new product was more prevalent than in places like India or Turkey. The Cahiers du Cinemart rehabilitation of weird old genre films did not trickle down to India, where films were still largely made to be consumed then disposed of.
Things have changed a lot since then. While the state of writing about old Bollywood genre films is still in its infancy, it has advanced in leaps and bounds in the past few years, and it's even advanced considerably since last I complained about this very topic -- which must have been round about the last time I reviewed a Dharmendra film. This has happened for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the growth of the Indian middle class, the rise of DVD and VCD, and the introduction of the Internet as a cheap alternative for publishing that removed the cost and organizational overhead of producing a fanzine, newsletter, or film club. It also has a lot to do with the spread of Indian culture and art throughout the rest of the world as Indians continue to immigrate or come of age in other countries. There's a whole batch of writers now who are ethnically Indian but have grown up in places like the United States and England. They're able to indulge to a much greater degree in exploring the history of a big chunk of Bollywood that was all but ignored by the academic press. For some, it's a whole new experience. For others, it's reawakening memories of loving these films as a child. Their enthusiasm draws in people from outside Indian culture, people who might be fans of crazy fantasy films or spy films but not necessarily fans of Bollywood. And they, in turn, draw in other people. And somewhere along the line, someone's dad finds out you're writing about Shammi Kapoor's pencil-thin mustache, and it brings back a whole slew of memories for him as well. And slowly but surely, Bollywood cult cinema has a network just like the one that exists for, say, Hong Kong action films or European horror movies. For the first time in a long time, you know other people who are watching and writing about Ramsay Brothers horror movies. Most of the cult film cabalism I've been a part of I came into after a support network, however thin, already existed. With the exploration of these types of films from India, I feel like we're in the midst of creating an entirely new fandom. It's a pretty cool feeling to be in on the ground floor and to know that on any given day, I can cruise on over to Die Danger Die Die Kill, Beth Loves Bollywood, Memsaab Story, Roti Kapada Aur Rum, and a number of other sites and find yet another recently rediscovered gem written about by someone as enthusiastic about these types of films as I am. It's a pleasant change from the days when I would skulk into a hole in the wall Indian video store looking for Ramsay Brothers horror films and be met with nothing but puzzled looks of either clulessness or disapproval. The celebration of Indian cult cinema is coming of age, and it's as diverse as the country and the cinema itself. Bollywood cult cinema is emerging on the world scene and being put on context next to everything from Eurospy films to Mexican luchadore and monster movies.
Which is to say that, after years in the wilderness, a group of people were starting to emerge that might bring me closer to figuring out what movie that goddamned screencap had come from. And it finally happened one day several months ago. I had decided that the screencap was a mistake, that it was just a still from one of the French Fantomas films of the 1960s that was erroneously placed on the cover of a Bollywood music remix CD. I didn't really believe it in my heart of hearts, but it was all I could tell myself so that I could stop thrashing fitfully about in my sleep, only to wake up in a cold sweat and screaming "Bollywood Fantomas!!!!" On a whim, and because I have an addictive personality, I did one last Google search for "bollywood fantomas." Nothing on the first page. Why do I even bother? Well, I thought, might as well look at the second page of results. And there it was. A link that said "Saazish: I think the boss is based on Fantomas." Could it be? So I followed the link, which happened to be a review from the site Memsaab Story. And scrolling down I saw...let's see. Helen's giant eye. Dharmendra in what looks like a helmet from an Italian science fiction film, a fake Chinese guy, and...my God! It's beautiful! There he was, staring back at me in all his expressionless blue-gray glory. I felt like Louis de Funes, the cop forever in pursuit of Fantomas in the movies and always one step behind the master criminal. "Bollywood Fantomas!" I cried triumphantly. "This time I have caught you!" One quick trip to IndiaWeekly, and a few days later I owned my own copy of the movie whose name had eluded me for so many years. My debt to Memsaab Story is beyond measure, though I feel it has shrunk a little since actually watching the film. Because after watching the film, all I could do was shake my fist at the heavens and angrily yell, "Dharmendra!!!" And, like Fantomas, all I could hear was his laughter, echoing in the distance as he escaped through some clever means and left me standing there, feeling a bit cheated on this, the eve of my victory. Because the son of a bitch done it to me again. Which is a really, really long way of saying that Saazish isn't very good. It's even more disappointing than Katilon Ke Kaatil, because Katilon Ke Kaatil was goofy and fun on top of being incompetent, where as Saazish is simply boring and poorly made. To be fair, there was probably no way it could live up to a build-up that spanned years. At the very least, though, it could have had the decency to be decent. And I guess maybe little parts of it are good, but there is so much crap to wade through to get to the good stuff that it's not really worth it. Granted, there's a lot of crap to wade through in many films, especially many Indian films. But usually it's crap with which I can deal. In the case of Saazish, however, the crap is mostly a performance by Saira Banu in the female lead that just might be the single most insipid, annoying, and grating performance I've ever seen in a Bollywood film. I would rather watch ten Johnny Levers than ever have to sit through Banu's performance in Saazish again.
My first experience with Dharmendra was the slick little espionage caper Aankhen, which among other things paired him with a woman who pursues him in the beginning of the film to the point of seeming insane. Saazish features the same basic set-up, as Banu's Sunita picks Dharmendra's Jai more or less at random and decides to mercilessly stalk and sing to him until he falls in love with her. The difference is that Aankhen starred Mala Sinha, and her character wasn't just insane for love; she was also a bad-ass spy who knew her way around a Tommy gun, took an active part in blowing up various villain lairs, and owned a gigantic floppy sombrero. By contrast, Sunita...well, she frequently shrieks, overacts with the fierce hunger of Richard Burton at his very worst, and tends to cry in the way you expect to hear from a ten-year-old, practically mouthing "boo hoo hoo!" at various points. By the halfway point, I was ready to throw my lot in with Fantomas, who was doing his best (which, to be fair, was pretty bad) to have her killed. So here's the plot, such as it is. Sunita has just won the Miss Cosmos beauty competition, a fact that she tells pretty much anyone and everyone she meets. You might think that this is an attempt at characterization, that we are supposed to find her constant mentioning of her beauty to be a comedic character quirk. I assure you, it is not. We are supposed to find her engaging and charming. I did not. Her first task as the world queen of beauty (I beg to differ, but that's me, and opinions vary) is to go to Hong Kong and award the trophy for what is supposed to be the most prestigious auto race in Asia. Said race is realized by cobbling together stock footage of what looks to be a Le Mans race with footage from what looks to be someone's home movie of a dirt track race, then you edit in some head shots of a listless Dharmendra wearing a dorky helmet that looks like it was on loan from an Alfonso Brescia sci-fi film. When Dharmendra wins the race, Sunita decides she is madly in love with him, even though the only thing she knows about him is that he won a car race. I don't even know what that is. I mean, if she thought he was hot, then at least she would be shallow. But she hasn't even seen him as anything other than a speck on a race track wearing a dumb helmet. So that doesn't even qualify as shallow. That's just plum crazy, son. Dharmendra seems to think so, too, but after she wears him down with her endearing antics that include following him around, shrieking like a banshee, and pretending to commit suicide, he finally gives in and takes her on the least scenic musical travelogue tour of Hong Kong imaginable, including as it does a highway junction, some dreary gray cinderblock housing projects, and a walk down the middle of a fucking busy highway!!! Lady, could his signals be any clearer??? Their mediocre day out together culminates in a cruise during which Sunita happens upon a murder in progress. As a dying man riddled with bullet holes staggers toward her, notice that the many extras seated around her remain as still as statues, staring directly ahead as if absolutely nothing is happening. The dying man mutters something about gold, a ship, and reporting to Interpol, then drops dead, leaving Sunita face to face with a bunch of gunmen who, though they are standing in the middle of the dining room waving their guns about, also fail to attract the attention of anyone else on the boat.
Sunita, rather than rushing to Jai's side (he was busy getting coffee, which must be the most delicious coffee in the world, as it causes him and everyone else on the boat to miss a murder by machine gun as well as a blood-soaked dude staggering up and down the stairs), or rushing to the nearest cop, hops off the boat, hails a cab, and badgers him until he takes her to the Interpol office, which looks to be a quaintly appointed residential living room with fancy space-age phones. Somehow, Sunita is allowed to walk right into the building and straight up to the director's office without being questioned by anyone. That's some quality security, Interpol. No wonder they got shifted from fighting criminal masterminds to shutting down bootleg DVD retailers. As soon as she arrives in the office, the phone rings. The director, who was hiding behind his desk for absolutely no discernible reason other than shits and giggles, hands it to her, as the call is for her. It seems the gang responsible for the murder has captured Jai, and if Sunita talks, they will kill him. No one stops to wonder how they knew where to call her, just as no one thinks that possibly calling someone on the phone line belonging to the head of Interpol so you can tell that person not to talk to the head of Interpol might not be an entirely secure way of doing covert business. The Interpol guy then allows her to leave without asking her any questions or following up with the whole death threat phone call -- which he listened in on using a pair of glasses with flashing lights on the rims. Sure, they have other ways to listen in on phone calls, like picking up the other receiver, but I reckon some slick traveling salesmen sold Interpol on the stupid glasses, and they feel like they should get their money's worth no matter how stupid it is. It was probably the same guy who sold the Japanese military all those Maser cannons to fight giant monsters, but neglected to mention that they only work against gargantuas. Still, Japan has a lot of the things, so every time Godzilla shows up, they dutifully roll them out in hopes that he'll trash a few of them, allowing the Japanese Self Defense Force, if nothing else, to free up some much needed garage space. If idiocy like this comprised the entire running length of the picture, I'd be in perfectly comfortable territory. Alas, it only lasts for about five more minutes -- as Jai meets the mysterious Fantomas -- or Mr. Han, as he's called here (let's call him Hantomas) -- and convinces the master criminal that he should be allowed to kill Sunita, since he was only with her to get at her considerable wealth. Remarkably, Mr. Hantomas agrees to this without so much as a single question. Damn. Apparently, working for Hong Kong's most infamous masked criminal is easier than getting a job at Best Buy. Back in 1992, I worked a warehouse job at Toys-R-Us, and even for that I had to take a long test and watch a bunch of videos about how stealing is wrong. Surely Hantomas can make Jai watch some videos about how stealing kicks ass, or do a background check, or something. I thought that Interpol was incompetent, but if this is the sort of master criminal they're up against, I guess it's a pretty level playing field.
Of course, one of the key components of any swingin' Bond style super-villain is his secret lair. Fantomas had a pretty swanky underground pad full or works of art and candelabras, something in between Diabolik and Doctor No. Hantomas got the cave part down, but he didn't add much other than installing a few swishing doors, some random blinking lights, and for some reason, a hidden radio. I guess that shows initiative. It's not every super villain who would go that extra mile to install a hidden radio inside a lair that was already hidden. That's like buying a safe and putting a little safe inside it that contains your Zune (because you didn't want to buy an iPod) even though the big safe is already full of jewels and bundles of cash and nude photos of Priyanka Chopra. It's probably one of those flourishes that seemed cool at the time but got to be a real hassle after a while. Every time someone wants to use the radio, they have to go through the ritual of turning the statue and opening the rock wall. Since the guys in the secret lair would already also know about the secret radio, it probably got to the point where Hantomas' right hand man, Mr. Wong, just told the guys to leave it open. That, of course, leads to Hantomas furtively going over and closing it all the time, until the two criminals descend into a petty bickering argument not unlike roommates fighting over the proper setting for the air conditioner. Oh yeah, Mr. Wong. If you ever rolled your eyes at Caucasian guys donning fake eyelids and accents and passing themselves off as Asians in movies, rest assured that this is hardly confined to the West. Madan Puri, who portrays Mr. Wong, is about as Chinese as Bela Lugosi, the last non-Chinese guy to play an evil Mr. Wong. Turnabout's fair play, though, because it's not as if there was never a Chinese actor who put on "brown face" and played an Indian. The thugs in Hantomas' gang don't really inspire much more confidence than their boss. Even though their order is to kill Jai as soon as he leaves, all they do is point their guns and run toward him one at a time so he can kick them in the face. At one point, they even stand around with their guns pointed at him and wait until he fishes a yo-yo out of his pocket and uses it to hit them in the face. Dudes, Hantomas bought you guns! As professional heavies, it was your obligation to learn when and how to use them. Like when the guy you are supposed to shoot is standing right in front of you, that's generally a good time to shoot him, not wait for him to fish a yo-yo out of his pocket (it takes him a few tries) and throw it at you. And seriously -- why the hell has Jai been walking around with a yo-yo in his pocket while he was on his date with Sunita? Actually, I have to retract my criticism of their failure of three men armed with machine guns and pistols to defeat a guy with a yo-yo in his pocket, because in the ensuing car chase, we see them right behind him, but the dude firing the machine gun out the window is holding it straight out to the side of the car, meaning that he's not even firing in the right direction. This is what Hantomas gets for hiring his goons from the line outside a "Three Stooges" casting call. Somehow, that whole mess ends up with Jai throwing grenades at people. So he went on a date and filled his pockets with yo-yos and hand grenades? Dharmendra sure knows how to operate!
From here, the movie settles in for what seems like a full hour of Saira Banu turning in a performance that would embarrass a marginally talented actor in a sixth grade school play. Every facial expression, every movement, every line is delivered with the subtlety of a petulant child playing charades. And when she cries! Oh my God, when she cries! No professional actress should actually use the words "Oh boo hoo hoo!" to communicate crying. But you better get used to it, because for the next hour, it's "Oh boo hoo hoo!" and "Oh Jai, I'm so scared!" and "Why, I'm Sunita, the winner of the Miss Cosmos beauty contest. Don't you know?" It's a nightmarish slog through the middle ninety minutes of this film, and if I wasn't watching it with the intention of reviewing it, I would have given up and watched it on fast forward. Even the rare musical number offers no respite from the tedium, as these scenes offer absolutely nothing in the way of creativity or fun, unless you think it's fun to watch Dharmendra standing on some concrete steps while wearing a sweater. I guess we're supposed to be on the edge of our seats as Dharmendra attempts to outfox Hantomas by pretending to be on the side of evil, but it's hard to get into the spirit of things when it's so obvious Dharmendra will end up being a secret Interpol guy. Seriously, after about the third time he's foiled a Hantomas hit attempt, you'd think the master criminal would stop believing the guy. Eventually everyone winds up on board a cruise ship that also happens to be full of smuggler's gold, reminding you that you've gone for most of the movie without even knowing what the hell Hantomas and his gang are even trying to do. I guess they were trying to smuggle gold, or possibly steal it, but their entire scheme seems to have absolutely no point at all. Nothing they do seems to have any connection to anything else they do. It's completely baffling to the point that I started to think this was less a criminal gang and more a dada-ist performance art troupe. Every time you ask them a question, they respond with a dance or by miming a tennis match. What are you trying to tell me, Hantomas! I don't understand!!! Or perhaps...perhaps Hantomas is a criminal genius, and the apparent incoherence of everything he does is just a clever ploy to confound Interpol! Or perhaps this is just a piece of junk script that no one put any thought into. We may never know. At least Helen is aboard the ship. Did that woman age at all? She's as wild, flexible, and hot in 1975 as she was in 1965, which is more than can be said for Dharmendra. Her appearance is almost as nonsensical as everything else in the film, but I've never needed much logical reason for Helen to appear. At least we can look forward to one good dance number. Or can we? Because they mostly have her hanging around in her room, half-heartedly romancing whichever guy happens to walk through the door. All Helen really does is remind you how much happier you'd be if the entire move had featured her instead of Saira Banu. Helen eventually gets a dance number, but she has to share it with Banu, which is not welcome. Being in a number with Helen does Saira Banu no favors, either, as Helen is about a hundred times hotter and makes Sairu's dancing look like Sonny Deol's. At least Dharmendra strips down to his little Elvis Presley swimming trunks for the final showdown with Hantomas and the goons, at which time it is revealed that practically everyone on board the ship is either an undercover criminal or undercover Interpol guy.
So here's what you do to make this a good movie. Watch up until Jai meets Hantomas, then fast forward to the hour-forty mark, right when the Sunita/Helen dance number starts, and finish the movie from there. Because the last thirty minutes or so is nothing but Dharmendra beating the tar out of chumps while wearing tiny little shorts. Oh yes, there will be Dharmendra buffalo shots. The entire ship erupts in a finale of kungfu fighting, machine gun waving, gratuitous backflipping, and grenade tossing. If the whole movie had been like that, it would have been the most awesome film ever made. Instead, it was about thirty minutes of cool stuff smothered by ninety minutes of stuff that, at its best, is tedious, and at its worst actually made me wish I could reach into the television Videodrome style and throttle Saira Banu until she shut the hell up. You remember how much we all hated Kate Capshaw in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? Well, now I have fond memories of her. Thanks, Banu. You were that bad. To be fair, though, Banu is still less annoying than the insanely creepy comic relief guy who shows up on the boat and keeps breaking into people's cabins in order to find Helen, with whom he seems obsessed to the point of being a potential rapist-murderer. What the hell was his deal anyway? I don't even care anymore. When Mr. Wong threatens to kill the asshole, I can't help but wondering, once again, who's the bad guy here? This whole ship was full of creepy guys -- like the dude who spends all day hanging upside down and pouncing on people like a cat. Seriously, Saazish -- what the hell? At some point, I thought I might have accidentally stopped watching a spy movie and started watching something like Mansion of Madness. All this ship lacked was a madman in ragged Victorian garb, carrying a scepter made out of garbage and leading an equally ragged band of crazies like they were in a marching band.
Under normal circumstances, espionage films such as these are more than enough fun to make it easy to gloss over the rough edges that are present in so many of the films: the daft plotting, the crude editing, the overall cheapness. But when a movie's virtues are as thinly spread as they are here, the foibles are impossible to wave off. Instead, every idiotic line, every bad edit, every time the shadow of the boom mic, the camera, and the entire goddamn crew shows up on the wall behind the actors, it's hard not to notice. The plot seems to have been made up as they went, and even then they weren't putting much work into it. Even by the less-than-rigorous continuity standards of Bollywood action cinema, it's an incoherent, bloody mess full of the most glaring inanities. It seems like the film's production might have been stretched over a long period, as Dharmendra's hair changes radically, sometimes in the same scene. Or maybe his ability to have sideburns appear and disappear in the same scene was part of his character's spy training. For a while I thought they got a really doughy, unflattering stunt double for Dharmendra in certain scenes, until I realized that it actually was Dharmendra. Like his hair, his level of fitness varies pretty wildly from one scene to the next. Luckily, he's in pretty good shape for his ass-kicking romp in the only booty shorts smaller than the ones being worn by Sunita. Director Kalidas had very few film credits before this film, and even fewer after, which means at least soemthing good came of this movie. Ranjan Bose is credited for the story, and Ramesh Pant for the screenplay, but I refuse to believe this film was actually written by anyone. Pant also wrote An Evening in Paris, which is a fine film. And hell! Bose wrote The Great Gambler, which starred Amitabh and Zeenat and was all sorts of awesome. I can only assume that absolutely no one gave a damn about Saazish while they were working on it. Even the music and dancing is lame. Why the hell put Helen in your movie than have her do only half a dance? Although, to the film's credit, her outfit is the only one skimpier than Dharmendra's action man-panties.
Speaking of not giving a damn, that seems to be Dharmendra's main mode here, though from time to time he does seem to liven up a bit. By 1975, I guess Dharmendra's star was starting to fade a bit, and the new king of the scene was Amitabh Bachchan. That might go a long way in explaining why these mid-70s Dharmendra films are as bad as Amitabh's mid-80s film, when his star was in about the same place as Dharmendra's was in 1975. Just a year earlier, Dharmendra starred with Saira Banu in the film International Crook, which I have not seen. Usually, finding out that Dharmendra was in a movie called International Crook, and that Feroz Khan was in it as well, would be enough to put that film on my "must see" list. After enduring Banu's wretched histrionics in Saazish, though, I don't think I ever want to see anything with her in it again. Maybe if her character was supposed to be a spoiled brat who learns the error of her ways or is at least played for comedy, but no. This wasn't comedy or clever satire, or even stupid satire. It was just phenomenally terrible acting. I know, I know, she was in the original Bluff Master, and that's a pretty good movie, but I don't care. In all my journeys through Bollywood so far, I've never encountered an actress whose portrayal of a character filled me with such irritation. Well, congratulations, Banu. I guess someone had to be the first. I'm convinced that her career as an actress had less to do with either her looks or her talent, and a lot more to do with the fact that she married Bollywood megastar Dilip Kumar. I went in to this movie predisposed to liking it. It was an espionage/fumetti flavored Bollywood film. It starred Dharmendra. It featured Fantomas, calling himself Mr. Han (someone must have just watched Enter the Dragon). And I spent years trying to track it down. Plus, I watch films with the intent of enjoying them. As I've written before, one of the principles behind Teleport City is that we aren't a site that exists purely to rip apart movies and complain about them. We're here to celebrate the things we enjoy, and usually, the ribbing we do is good-natured and done out of affection. Although it sounds unbelievable, I really do have better things to do with my life than watch movies I don't like. As such, it was going to take a whole hell of a lot of badness for me to not like Saazish. Sadly, a whole hell of a lot of badness is exactly what I got. It seems rather a cold payoff for all those years of searching, as I put more work into finding and watching this movie than the cast and crew put into making it. Even measured against the bottom of the espionage film barrel, this is pretty bad stuff. And for once, I'm not going to spend an entire review poking fun at a film, then tell you to go see it. You can feel perfectly at ease skipping this one entirely. I guess if you are walking home one night and someone hits you over the head and forces a copy of this movie into your hands, then you can take it home and watch the very beginning and final thirty minutes or so and have a pretty good time of it. Just beware the ninety minutes in between, for there is a black pit from which your soul will never again emerge, and you will be forced to spend eternity in that black pit next to Dharmendra, who will shrug like he doesn't give a damn, and for the rest of your miserable existence, all you will hear is a shrill female voice whining, "Oh, Jai! Boo hoo hoo!"  Labels: Bollywood, Espionage, Stars: Dharmendra, Year: 1975 posted by Keith at 1:08 AM | 19 Comments Wednesday, September 03, 2008Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani Release Year: 2002Country: India Starring: Manisha Koirala, Sunny Deol, Akshay Kumar, Sunil Shetty, Arman Kohli, Raj Babbar, Aftab Shivdasani, Rajat Bedi, Sharad S. Kapoor, Ali Khan, Shahbaaz Khan, Johnny Lever, Sonu Nigam, Nikita, Aditya Pancholi, Rambha, Payal, Amrish Puri, Kiran Rathod, Mohini Sharma, Siddharth, Upasna Singh, Arshad Warsi Writers: Naveena Bhandari, Raj Kumar Kohli, Rajendra Singh "Atish", K.K. Singh Director: Raj Kumar Kohli Cinematographers: Damodar Naidu, Thomas A. Xavier Music: Anand Raj Anand, Anand Chitragupth, Milind Chitragupth, Sandeep Chowta Producer: Raj Kumar Kohli That some of Bollywood's worst sins have been committed in the name of nepotism is a fact which anyone who has borne witness to Karisma Kapoor's early career can sadly attest to. For the Hindi film industry's directors, stars and producers, dynasty building seems to be a top order of business, right alongside the practice of their chosen craft. For a fearsome reminder of this, one need look no further than director Raj Kumar Kohli's 2002 film Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani, as terrible a monument to a father's love for his son as has ever been erected. Kohli made his initial mark on Bollywood with a pair of supernaturally-themed blockbusters during the seventies. The first of these was 1976's Nagin, just one in a long line of Bollywood movies concerning the dark escapades of snake spirits who are capable of taking human form. Reena Roy starred as a female snake whose lover is mistakenly killed by a group of hunters. Vowing revenge, she sets about eliminating the hunters one by one by seducing them under a variety of human guises before killing them. Under Kohli's guidance, the film came to exemplify two prominent strains in 1970s Bollywood cinema, both of which the director seemed to have taken very closely to heart. One is the trend for "multi-starrers", which was in full force at the time (and which, in America, resulted in the type of films whose posters featured pictures of the stars lined up in little boxes along the bottom). To this end, Kohli packed Nagin's cast with an impressive assortment of name brand talent, including -- in addition to Roy -- Feroz Khan, Sunil Dutt, Jeetendra and Rekha. In addition to that, Nagin seemed to take 1970s Bollywood's tendency toward fanciful design and blinding displays of color to a retina-rending extreme, adopting the look of a lurid cinematic comic book, complete with dreamily artificial-looking sets cast in florescent primary hues and woozily melding pastels.     For his next big hit, 1979's Jaani Dushman, Kohli followed much the same pattern, stuffing the cast with as many big names as it could take -- Sunil Dutt, Shatrughan Sinha, Rekha, Reena Roy, Sanjeev Kumar and Neetu Singh among them -- and adopting a similarly narcotic palette. This time, the film focused on a werewolf-like creature who murders brides on their wedding day. While not quite as much fun as Nagin, Jaani Dushman was not without its moments of effectively creepy atmospherics, and boasted the added attraction of featuring a young Amrish Puri as its monster. The hits kept coming for Kohli throughout the eighties, but the dawn of the following decade would see the director take on a project that, in retrospect, seems to have sent his career careening irreparably off the rails. That project started with 1992's Virodhi, and had as its goal the elevation to stardom of actor Arman Kohli, who also happened to be Raj Kumar Kohli's son. Virodhi, unfortunately, was an utter failure -- both in terms of box office receipts and as a vehicle for Arman -- and two successive attempts at the same prize, 1993's Auland Ke Dushman and 1997's Qahar, didn't fare any better. Kohli, however, remained committed to furthering his son's career -- to the extent of limiting his directing output exclusively to films starring Arman -- and, by 2002, seemed to have come to the conclusion that the key to success lay in forging an association between his son's name and those beloved hits that had cemented his reputation as a director. To this end, the story of Nagin was updated, but then, in a curious touch, fitted with the title of Kohli's other big seventies hit. The result, Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani (translation: "Beloved Enemy: A Strange Tale"), turned out to be not only a resounding box office dud, but also a film that would come to be widely considered one of the worst ever produced by Bollywood.     I recently found myself trying to defend Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani against this particular judgment, arguing that, while the film was indeed searingly bad, it was also very entertaining, a fact which I felt should place it above other Bollywood films that were comparably bad but also boring. On second thought, though, I had to reconsider that opinion, because the truth is that there is not one element of Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani that is not misjudged -- a pretty impressive feat that makes an extreme distinction like "worst ever" well earned. This is not the only thing that makes the movie special, however. For one, it accomplishes the seemingly impossible by achieving a sort of surplus of deficit -- by which I mean that it abounds with so much evidence of poverty of imagination on the part of its makers that its very unoriginality comes to take on a kind of uniqueness, and its insubstantiality a kind of heft. Kohli's approach to making JD:EAK seems to have been to simply make the same movie he would have made back in the seventies -- complete with cartoon color scheme and outrageously phony-looking, stage-bound sets -- and then update it for a young audience by awkwardly grafting onto it elements taken of a piece from every major Hollywood action blockbuster of the last ten years, regardless of how those elements did or didn't fit in with the story that he was trying to tell. What saves the film is how Kohli so often spectacularly stumbles in duplicating those elements. After all, if executed competently, Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani would have ended up being just one of many bloated, special effects-driven blockbusters with a cast of blandly attractive but ultimately unlikeable young stars. As is, it works as a brilliant parody, lampooning all of those Hollywood excesses that it seeks to carbon copy with an effectiveness far beyond that of any of the Scary Movie-type films currently being turned out by the American studios (or, for that matter, Tropic Thunder). In fact, I firmly believe that, if every producer in Hollywood were forced to watch Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani, many would be shamed away from ever using any of the tropes that it so clunkily borrows again.     Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani boldly puts its worst foot forward with an opening scene containing computer effects of astonishing ineptitude. To be fair, not all of the film's effects will be as bad as what you'll see here -- and at times they even approach mediocrity -- but it's so difficult to wash the taste of these particular effects out of your mouth that those later scenes that rise above the bar they set end up coming across as the exceptions rather than the rule. The scene takes place after the wedding of Rajesh (Rajat Bedi), one of the many depressingly interchangeable young people that make up the film's cast of characters, and we join Rajesh in the honeymoon suite just as he is about to lift the veil from his bride's lovely face. Only hers is not a lovely face at all, it turns out, but rather a giant skeleton head animated with all the precision and detail you'd expect to find in a handheld video game from the eighties. As Rajesh recoils in horror, his bride morphs completely into a cartoon skeleton so lacking in any illusion of physical depth that it could have been lifted from an episode of South Park and proceeds to beat him up, all the while cackling crazily like a drunken old prospector. Interestingly, those in charge of rendering the skeleton appear to have felt that the idea of a skeleton that was actually, you know, skeletal beating up the beefy Rajat Bedi placed too much of a tax on credibility, and so made the ill-advised decision to provide that skeleton with something akin to muscle mass. The resulting creature is nothing if not otherworldly, boasting exaggerated, Popeye-like bulges in the bones of its legs and upper arms. Then again, it could just be that no one involved knew how to draw a skeleton. After sending Rajesh's broken body flying out the window of his suite and crashing -- much to the consternation of his gathered friends -- onto the floor of the ballroom where his reception is still in progress, the terrifying, one dimensional cartoon skeleton makes its way jerkily to the shadowy ruin of an old fortress. Here it assumes the spectral form of Divya, a young woman played by the talented Manisha Koirala (here doing penance for god knows what karmic infraction). Divya was not always a spook with the ability to turn into a bulked-up cartoon skeleton, however, and a flashback handily appears to show us how she came to be in such a state. It seems that, not all that long ago, she was just a normal college student with a large assortment of depressingly interchangeable yet uncommonly scrubbed and blandly attractive looking friends. Two of those friends, however -- specifically the aforementioned Rajesh and another fellow named Madan (Siddharth) -- were also rapists, it turns out. And, as we see, they almost succeeded at raping Divya in her aspirational poster-laden dorm room, but for the fist-y intervention of Divya's beau, Karan, who is played by Sunny Deol.     Now, like the earlier Raj Kumar Kohli hits that it's modeled on, JD:EAK is a movie in the old multistarrer tradition and, as such, boasts a large cast that features some of the most big-ish Bollywood stars of its day, not the least of whom is Sunny Deol. No stranger to the benefits of nepotism himself, Sunny is the son of Dharmendra, one of the industry's biggest stars of the sixties and seventies. Like his dad, Sunny got a lot of mileage out of puffing out his chest, pointing a finger, and booming out defiant proclamations at people before punching them -- and his brief introduction here -- before summarily jetting off to London for some business that, we're told, will take him several months -- clues us in right away that, whatever the conflict in JD:EAK is going to be, its resolution is going to involve Sunny Deol coming back to town to shout and punch it into submission. Before jetting off, though, Sunny/Karan takes Divya's would-be rapists to the dean of the school, Joseph (Raj Babbar), who tells the now penitent young men that, before he can decide on a course of action, they must ask Divya for forgiveness. Divya's large assortment of depressingly interchangeable friends prove to be a big help in this matter, as they unanimously and as a group browbeat her into accepting Rajesh and Madan's apology, saying, among other things, that to do otherwise would make people think that she is "too proud of her beauty". After all, says her friend Atul (Akshay Kumar -- and I believe it's pronounced "A Tool"), the two are healthy young men and she's a hottie, so what could she expect them to do other than get rapey with her? It's all pretty heart warming, really. Little would anyone suspect that Divya's well-meaning and not-at-all-worthy-of-being-systematically-murdered-by-a-malevolent-otherworldly-force friends were advising her to make what would turn out to be a pretty bad decision.     But before that startling revelation, Divya awakes one evening to the sound of an eerie call that summons her to a Banyan tree in a park that lies just outside her dorm. A CGI explosion heralds the arrival of a poorly animated cobra that morphs into Raj Kumar Kohli's son Arman in the role of Kapil, a centuries old snake spirit. Kapil tells Divya that she, too, was once a cobra -- his cobra girlfriend, in fact -- and that they are destined to be together once more. To quell any of Divya's doubts, Kapil transports her back in time, where we see the two of them in happier days, dancing against a rapidly shifting backdrop of flat-looking computer generated fantasy vistas. The end effect is kind of like those tourist videos you used to be able to get where it looked like you were sitting on a flying carpet. This aforementioned scene, along with providing yet another example of JD:EAK's woefully behind-the-curve computer effects capabilities, puts in stark relief yet another of the film's glaring shortcomings. And it's not Anan Raj Anand's songs, either -- which are merely generic and forgettable -- but rather Ganesh Acharya's choreography, which is truly awful. This is even more apparent in the film's many party scenes, where the hypnotic repetition of head shaking and methodical shuffling from foot to foot on the part of the young cast comes across like a kind of hoochified Hokey Pokey. Whether this is in part due to the dancing abilities of the cast is another issue. But I think it's telling that, even in the case of Manisha Koirala, who has shown herself to be an able dancer in other films, you feel like you can actually see the actors counting in their heads while performing these numbers. Divya and Kapil end their happy dance by stomping up and down on top of a cave which happens to contain Amrish Puri as a dirt-encrusted old shaman type. Amrish is royally pissed at being woken from his long meditation, and places a curse on the two snake people that causes olden-times Divya to die pretty much immediately. Kapil begs the sage to reverse the spell, but the old guy tells him that it's too late for that. However, Amrish is moved enough by Kapil's anguish to append his curse with a provision that will allow Divya to be reincarnated as a human many years hence. All Kapil must do is live inside that Banyan tree for however many centuries it will take for that to happen, at which time he will be freed to reunite with her. The plus side is that, when released, he will be invincible to all but those with divine powers.     Back in the 21st century, Divya, her snake memories restored, takes all of this in stride for the most part and quickly gets back to the routine of college life -- which, of course, means parties. Unfortunately, the predatory Rajesh seizes the opportunity of a party thrown by Atul at the old ruined fortress to lay a trap for Divya, impersonating his other friends in the course of doing so. At his direction, Divya unwittingly shows up for the party an hour early, only to find just Rajesh and Madan waiting for her. This time the men's rape attempt is successful, and it's just about as nasty as Bollywood standards would allow -- not graphic, but still shocking in its brutality, and leaving no doubt as to exactly what's going on. In keeping with the film's Jurassic sexual politics, Divya -- who, in the wake of Rajesh and Madan's failed rape attempt, was given no choice but to forgive her attackers -- is now given no choice but to commit suicide, and so impales herself on a convenient tree branch. The rest of the distressingly indistinguishable crew then shows up and, though someone makes noise about calling an ambulance, quickly find themselves content to bicker with the rapidly dying Divya over who exactly was responsible for her getting into this predicament. Finally, the centuries-old snake spirit Kapil happens to casually stroll by just in time for his long awaited lady love to die in his arms. And it is at this point that something strange and wonderful happens to Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani -- something that will leave those who found the movie's first hour incomprehensible pining for the relative coherence that it provided. Because nothing that will happen in the film from this point on will make one lick of sense. In time honored fashion, Kapil throws his arms out and cries in anguish to the heavens, at which point lots of CGI lightning thunders down upon him, and the brief, Egyptian-style garb that he is wearing morphs into a sculpted, form-fitting, head-to-toe leather ensemble very closely based on that worn my Laurence Fishburne in The Matrix. Then, with the aid of more CGI, his mouth opens unnaturally wide and he emits forth a raging sandstorm, just like the mummy in The Mummy. Finally, with all of Divya's other former friends apparently blown out the door, Kapil -- in a manner somewhat more appropriate for a centuries-old snake spirit -- turns into a snake and bites Madan to death.     With their first act of revenge out of the way, Kapil and the now spectral Divya hold a powwow, during which Kapil informs Divya that it should be he who carries out the lion's share of payback against that amorphous mass of humanity that is her circle of friends. This is because Divya, being just a spook, can only act by possessing the bodies of others, while Kapil, being invincible and able to transform into anything he wishes to, is limited only by the imaginations of the filmmakers -- which, as we'll see, are actually pretty limited. Nonetheless, he sets about the task of picking off Divya's crew with enthusiasm. Of course, each must die in reverse order of his or her star power, and so it is Victor, played by Sharad S. Kapoor, who is next to go. The sequence in which Kapil chases down and kills Victor turns out to be yet another dizzying mosaic of clumsy visual quotes from 1990s action movies, starting with a fight in the woods during which Kapil's sudden and inexplicable transformation into some kind of killer robot/mummy/virtual reality guy is completed by the sudden accompaniment of Robocop-like electronic buzzing and whirring sounds effects. Much wire-assisted flying and kicking follows, which manages to vividly evoke memories of particular scenes in The Matrix while at the same time falling drastically short of them in terms of execution. Finally, Kapil chases after Victor's car while mimicking the stiff-limbed high-speed gait of Terminator 2's T-1000, eventually somehow producing a motorcycle from his lower torso to complete the pursuit on wheels. Victor's end comes at the conclusion of a stunningly phony, digitally-assisted motorcycle jump by Kapil that plants the front tire squarely on his victim's collarbone. Now having assumed the form of Victor, Kapil goes about his next order of business, which is to -- as if in response to popular request on the part of the audience -- eliminate the gang's resident comic relief guy, Abdul (Arshad Warsi). This is accomplished by Kapil throwing Abdul into a swimming pool and then summoning the awesome force of computer-generated lighting bolts to electrocute him. This scene is gratifying on many levels, but is most memorable for how, Abdul, despite having zillions of volts of electricity pulsing through his body, is somehow still able to deliver a moving farewell speech to his friends gathered poolside before giving up the ghost. Sadly, this does not leave us viewers in the clear, because the filmmakers, seeing a comic relief vacuum left in Abdul's absence, decide to fill the gap with the subsequent introduction into the cast of migraine-conjuring Bollywood yuk-meister Johnny Lever.     Eventually the gang gets the notion that they must somehow defend themselves against Kapil, and so turn to Joseph, the school's dean. Joseph -- though probably not considerably older than most of the 30-something "students" in his charge -- is something of an all-purpose adult in JD:EAK, serving not only as dean, but also science teacher and, as we'll see in a later scene, boxing referee. Providentially, he also happens to be some kind of master of the supernatural arts, which leads to one of the film's most indelible set pieces. Convinced that the gang are innocent of the crimes for which Kapil and Divya are punishing them, Joseph sets about conjuring forth the spirit of Divya so that they may plead their case to her. When Divya makes her appearance, it is for all intents and purposes in the person of the miniature, holographically-projected Princess Leia from the beginning of the first Star Wars movie. While initially awed by this otherworldly phenomenon made manifest before them, the kids are quick to devolve into bickering with the intransigent mini-Divya as if they were so many Real World contestants arguing over the allotment of refrigerator space. That is until Akshay Kumar, having had enough of Divya's ectoplasmic lip, empties a handgun into her spectral visage. Take that, stupid apparition. So now, naturally, it's time for Atul/Akshay to feel the bitter sting of Kapil's pixilated sword of vengeance. This takes place during a sequence that is obviously intended to be JD:EAK's version of an action tour de force, featuring motorcycles, speedboats, massive explosions, jet skis, and Kapil running across water like some black leather-clad, Michael Bay version of Jesus. Plagiarism-wise, the scene is a mash-up of equal parts T2 and The Matrix, with Kapil going from dodging rounds in bullet time to simply letting those rounds pass through him to leave chrome-dripping, perfectly round holes in his body which rapidly seal themselves. This peaks with a replay of the bit from T2 where an explosion reduces the T-1000 to puddles of liquid metal, from which he reassembles himself into silvery humanoid form -- although, in this case, the result is so sad looking that you kind of wish that you could just give the movie a hug.     Now, a lot of other stuff happens in Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani. It is, after all, a long movie, and brim-full of visual wonders and momentous events, most of which involve shudderingly terrible CGI effects emulating scenes from bloated Hollywood blockbusters of the nineties. I'm sure, once this review has been posted, I'll hear from some of you who have seen the movie, asking why I failed to mention some favorite scene. For instance, you might ask, "What about Sunil Shetty's interminable green screen fall down the face of a not-all-that-tall building, complete with gratuitous air swimming and Mr. Bill facial expressions?" Or: "What about the big explosion where the devices used to catapult the cars into the air are clearly visible?" Or: "What about the scene where Divya possesses Akshay Kumar's girlfriend and tries to kill him by making him dance off a cliff during an upbeat musical number?" Or... Oh my God, shut up! Shut up! Shut up! The fact is that, as much enjoyment as I got out of this movie, to take the time to describe all of those events in detail would be giving it far much more time than it deserves. Besides, if you are, like me, the type of idiot who would watch a movie like this, you're already sold. (I know: "Sniff... You had me at the Popeye-armed, ColecoVision skeleton, you big lug.") Let's just suffice it to say that eventually the character Vivek, played by Sonu Nigam, calls his big brother in London and tells him of his fear that he'll be the next in line on Kapil's hit list. Vivek's big brother, I should mention, is Sunny Deol -- or, excuse me: "Karan", as portrayed by the actor Sunny Deol -- so you know where this is going. Sunny Deol really loses his shit big time at this news and starts shouting and pointing at everything, then slams the phone down and hops on the next plane back to India. Soon Sunny and Kapil are in a foundry beating the stink out of one another in exactly the manner decreed by the mere fact of Sunny Deol's presence in Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani. Finally, just when you think that he's about to bite it, Dean Joseph says an incantation that fills Sunny Deol with magic, enabling him to fatally impale Kapil on a girder, even though earlier scenes have demonstrated that Kapil is made of liquid metal exactly like the T-1000 in T2. In a last, conciliatory nod to that film to which JD:EAK owes so much, Kapil is thrown into a vat of white hot something-or-other and sinks Arnold-like into nothingness -- at which point we fade to Divya and Kapil, now reunited, dancing happily in a garish and shoddily computer animated version of an idyllic afterlife.     An interesting and/or perhaps sad thing about Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani is that, in casting his son as basically the locus for a lot of bad CGI effects, Raj Kumar Kohli wasn't exactly providing him with the best showcase for whatever acting talents or star quality he might have possessed. The only way that I can think that this might have seemed like a good idea would be if Kohli was actually trying to convince people that his son could really do the things he was shown doing in the film. (I can hear the producer now: "Get Arman Kohli. He can turn into a motorcycle!") As is, those scenes in which Arman is required to do anything beyond glare robotically and assume stylized Matrix poses -- mainly those in the first hour of the film in which he is required to interact with Manisha Koirala and do some tortured emoting -- don't leave much of an impression. The sense you do get is not so much of a bad actor, but simply of one not obviously possessed of those ingredients necessary to Bollywood superstardom. Whether this finally dawned upon Kohli pere is unclear, but the fact remains that he has not returned to the directing game since helming JD:EAK over six years ago. Of course, it is just as likely that he has simply opted for retirement, seeing as he is now in his late seventies. It also could be that he has faced difficulties in obtaining funding to make another film. After all, despite all of its flaws, JD:EAK was clearly a very expensive film to make, and no doubt left in its wake a good number of investors who were not eager to make the same mistake again. This last fact makes it hard not to wince a little bit as your laughing at Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani's excesses. There's a stink of naked desperation to all of its overkill Clearly, people had a lot riding on this movie, and at some juncture it was decided that the best way to recoup was to create a product that was not only spectacular in itself, but also derivative on a spectacular scale. As such, the pursuit of unoriginality in JD:EAK is striking in its aggressiveness, evidencing an unyielding determination on the part of its makers to make sure that absolutely nothing contained within it would be untested or challenging to expectations. It is by virtue of this that the movie ultimately serves to reveal with tragicomic accuracy the mindset behind the blockbusters that it seeks to duplicate, as if it were some kind of hideously mocking picture of Dorian Gray to be locked away in Hollywood's attic.     The shame here -- or at least one of the many shames -- is that, with films like Nagin and the original Jaani Dushman, Raj Kumar Kohli demonstrated a genuinely quirky sensibility, while at the same time proving that he could draw in a popular audience. Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani, on the other hand, demonstrates the culmination of a gradual grinding down of that sensibility. All in all, it's a pretty sad portrait of compromise. But if one were looking for some kind of redemptive tidbit within it, it might be found in the fact that Kohli was apparently motivated by a love of family, rather than any desire for mere material gain, in making it. Love really is a bitch, isn't it? Labels: Bollywood, Horror: Just Plain Weird, Stars: Amrish Puri, Stars: Manisha Koirala, Year: 2002 posted by Todd at 1:54 PM | 15 Comments Monday, June 30, 2008Geetaa Mera Naam Release Year: 1974Country: India Starring: Sadhana Shivdasani, Sunil Dutt, Feroz Khan, Ramesh Dio, Helen, Achala Sachdev, Jankidas, Manmohan, Keshto Mukherjee, Rajendra Nath, Muran, Mehmood Jr. Writers: R.K. Nayyar, Madan Joshi Director: Sadhana Shivdasani Cinematographer: Pratap Sinha Music: Laxmikant Shantaram Kudalkar, Pyarelal Ramprasad Sharma Producers: Atam Prakash, R.K. Nayyar The character of the high-kicking female badass was fairly commonplace in Asian cinema by 1974, especially in films coming out of Hong Kong and Japan. But in Bollywood, not so much. In fact, until recently, the only such character in a seventies Bollywood film I would be able to name off the top of my head would be the one played by Zeenat Aman in the original Don. Still, the 1974 film Geetaa Mera Naam puts just such a character front and center, talking tough, sticking it to the man, and dealing out whoopass to all comers without a thought of depending on male chivalry for her fortunes. Just what would it take to get a film focusing on such a character made in the Bollywood of the early seventies? Well, in the case of Geetaa Mera Naam, it probably didn't hurt that the film's director was a woman, and that that woman was also the movie's star -- a star who intended Geetaa Mera Naam to be her farewell to her audience after a short-lived but eventful career as a beloved screen icon. Achieving stardom at the dawn of the sixties, Sadhana Shivdasani -- often billed at the time as simply "Sadhana" -- staked out a place as one of the defining glamour girls of that decade, inspiring trends with the sophisticated fashions she wore on screen, as well as the distinctive, Audrey Hepburn-inspired hairstyle that would come to be known as the "Sadhana Fringe". Her dual role in the 1964 hit Woh Kaun Thi? (Who Was She?), an atmospheric mystery unusual at the time for its supernatural overtones, cemented her image as an exotic woman of mystery, and would influence many of the roles that she was to take from that point on. As the decade came to a close, Shivdasani, still at the peak of her enormous popularity, was stricken with a disfiguring thyroid condition, and was forced to withdraw for a time from the limelight. After successful treatment, she returned to making films, but by 1974 had found that the demands of her profession were beginning to wear on her. Wanting to leave the industry while still on top of her game, and on her own terms, she decided -- with the support of her husband, director R.K. Nayyar, as producer -- to take the reigns of her cinematic swan song by assuming the role of director as well as lead actress. As she would later say, "I wanted to be remembered as a heroine".     It's clear that Sadhana Shivdasani could have made any film she wanted at this point in her career. The fact that she chose to make Geetaa Mera Naam (Geetaa is My Name), to me, makes it even more tragic that she wouldn't go on to direct more. Though not without a degree of unfulfilled promise, the film strikes enough of a balance between over-ripe melodramatic cheese and lurid exploitation excess to make it an outstanding example of the exuberant madness that was 1970s masala cinema. To further distinguish it, Shivdasani and Nayyar (who also scripted) loaded Geetaa with a level of overt kink and perverse psychosexual overtones that had to be fairly boundary-pushing by the conservative standards of its day. Or any day, for that matter, given that it's lip-kissing-averse Bollywood we're talking about here. In addition to being kinky, trashy, sappy, kitschy and pulpy in fine measure, Geetaa Mera Naam is also yet another example of a film made in the "lost and found" mold so popular in its era, and as such begins by introducing us to the family whom fate will soon tear asunder. The widow Saraswati really does have quite a brood on her hands and, as the film opens, she has taken her twin baby girls, Geetaa and Kavita, and her two young boys, Suraj and Chandu, to the village fair. The boys, as any ten year old boys with an overburdened mother too exhausted to police them might, quickly get down to the business of getting tattoos, but Suraj soon becomes preoccupied with a stuffed monkey that one of the nearby vendors is selling. It's one of those creepy fabric animals with a plastic, caucasian-flesh-colored face of the kind apparently designed to provide baby boomer children with a lifetime of nightmares. Suraj begs his mother to buy the monkey for him and, after some protest, she relents. Unfortunately, Suraj doesn't get the chance to enjoy his monkey in peace, because no sooner is it in his hands than he is swept away by a gang of marauding bandits on horseback. As Saraswati runs after the fleeing bandits with Geetaa in arm, the fairground breaks out in pandemonium, and the other children are lost in the fracas.     After the credit sequence, we are brought up to date on how and where Saraswati's children, now grown to adulthood, have ended up. Chandu, it turns out, was found by a kindly couple who, after looking around the fairground for his mom a bit, simply decided to take him home and raise him as their own -- which makes me nostalgic for those days before Amber Alerts when the policy was pretty much "finders keepers" as far as lost children were concerned. Chandu has grown up to be a righteous and by-the-book police inspector. This makes him one of Geetaa Mera Naam's moral anchors, but also not a very interesting person, so it's no surprise that we don't see a lot of him as the film progresses. For her part, Kavita -- now known as Neeta -- has not fared quite so well in terms of her adoptive parents, as when we meet those parents they are in the process of selling Neeta for unwholesome purposes to an underworld figure named Mohan. Neeta, a virtuous schoolmarm, is totally taken by surprise that her parents would do such a thing, which is a little surprising in itself, given that her parents are so obviously a pair of greedy slimebags. You'd think Neeta would have had ample opportunity to notice this over the course of living with them for give-or-take thirty years. As for Suraj, his life among the bandits has lead to him meeting adulthood as Johnny, the leader of what is -- judging from his lavish-if-eccentrically-appointed lair -- a very successful international smuggling ring. Despite the name change, it's quite easy to identify Johnny as Suraj, because, in one of Geetaa Mera Naam's many deliciously crackbrained touches, he carries that same stuffed monkey from the fairgrounds with him literally at all times. In this sense the monkey serves as a more disturbingly psychologically revealing version of Ernst Blofeld's Persian cat, and Johnny can often be seen stroking its head distractedly as all manner of depravity plays out at his bidding. Johnny's numerous foot soldiers -- who, when not busy smuggling, serve as models for an array of colorful neckwear -- sit in rows alongside the walls of the space-age assembly hall that makes up the centerpiece of his lair, and when one of them displeases him, Johnny flicks a switch which tips that minion's chair back, dumping him into a waiting vat of molten wax, after which the underperforming toady appears in one of the glass cases lining the wall as a glistening wax statue.     Johnny is far from a soulless killer, however, and on those occasions when his high standards have driven him to take a human life, he does penance by having a brawny, leather-trussed and handlebar-mustached lackey named Sheru lash him repeatedly across the bare back with a whip. Now, you would be right in wondering how Johnny can effectively command a successful international smuggling operation when he is so obviously fucking out of his mind, which is why it's fortunate he has at his side his longtime friend and trusted right-hand man Raja, who keeps him on a relatively even keel while himself tending to some to the day-to-day unpleasantries that such an operation entails. Appropriately, the cast of Geetaa Mera Naam is well-stocked with co-stars from Sadhana's previous films. Sunil Dutt, in fact, had been her leading man no less than three times, including in one of her biggest hits, Waqt (which also featured Achala Sachdev, the actress who here plays Saraswati), so it's no real surprise that he was handed the meaty role of Johnny. Dance queen Helen, who plays Raja's conniving girlfriend Savitri, was an even more frequent player in Sadhana's films, though, given her prolific output, that might have been as much a statistical inevitability as it was the result of any special relationship between the two. Finally, for the role of Raja, Sadhana and Nayyar cast her co-star from 1965's Arzoo: that he-man among he-men, Feroz Khan, a choice which, if you're familiar with Khan's work at all, guarantees you that Geetaa Mera Naam will not be light on testosterone-drenched mayhem.     I used to think of Amitabh Bachchan as being, by default, the king of 1970s Bollywood action cinema. But the problem with that concept is those pesky acting chops of his. Because of his range and versatility, Bachchan could play drama and comedy as well as action, and often did each separately, in addition to often combining all of them within one picture. Because of this, his name doesn't have quite the branding effect that today an American star's like, say, Steven Seagal does. This is because of the looming potential for one of Amitabh's films to actually be different from the one that preceded it -- despite it being marketed very similarly due to the bank riding on his "Angry Young Man" image at the time. In the case of Feroz Khan, on the other hand, there were apparently just three things that the actor did -- or cared to do -- well: punching people, taking his shirt off, and being hairy. And if you invest your time in any Feroz Khan film made between 1970 and 1980, the chances are astronomically high that that is precisely what you are going to get. The man is simply the living trademark for seventies Bollywood at its most two-fisted and funkily furious. Furthermore, evidence suggests that he was very much a player in forging that association, because when he finally got the chance to direct his own film in 1980, what he made was Qurbani, arguably one of the greatest -- and not to mention most absurdly, insanely macho -- action films in Bollywood history. And Feroz's fists do indeed see a lot of action in Geetaa Mera Naam, as does his chest see a lot of open air, most memorably in a scene where Helen -- reclining with him on his round, revolving bed -- undoes his zippered shirt with her teeth. All this made me wonder if female audiences at the time really wanted to see Feroz's lushly-carpeted upper torso as much as he wanted to show it to them. However, it may just have been that it wasn't their fantasies that were being addressed. After all -- to put it in a more contemporary framework -- Feroz is nothing if not the ideal to which consumers of Axe Body Spray desperately aspire, despite them being separated by several musky gene pools from ever attaining it. Perhaps then it is the deepest fantasy of all men to go shirtless whenever they please, and to do so with greater frequency the more hirsute they are, proving their dominance by forcing the women around them to behold their lush topiary in all its magnificence. If this is indeed the case, then the Feroz Khan of Geetaa Mera Naam is truly living the dream.     Anyway, back in Geetaa Mera Naam's more civilized quarters, we find that upright police inspector Chandu, not surprisingly, is pining to bring Johnny and his gang to justice, but is hamstrung from doing so by a complete lack of evidence. Meanwhile, the paths of Johnny and Neeta (played by Sadhana in one half of yet another dual role) are about to cross with fateful results. It seems that Mohan, in addition to being a defiler of virtuous young schoolmarms, is also a business rival of Johnny's and, as masala movie logic would have it, ends up on the receiving end of a well-timed dagger in the back from Johnny at the very moment that Neeta is fighting off his unwelcome advances. As Johnny slips away unseen, Neeta is arrested for Mohan's murder and thrown in jail. It is at this point that we meet up with the last of the adult versions of Saraswati's children to be accounted for, Geetaa (also Sadhana), who is being let out of Jail just as Neeta is being thrown into it -- though without either one seeing the other. A switchblade-wielding, small time ne'er-do-well and street brawler, Geetaa is just getting off a short stint in stir for what Chandu describes as "bullying" some poor fellow who had the sac to hit on her. To mark her exit, the inspector deals out a boilerplate "yours is a path to ruin" speech, and Geetaa, clad in the first of many redder-than-red outfits that will make the most of the film's highly-saturated comic book color scheme, deals out some fairly boilerplate J.D. attitude in return. Geetaa then hits the streets, and is immediately set upon by some of Mohan's men, who have mistaken her for Neeta. The thugs drive her to a construction site with nefarious intentions, and are there joined by more of their number, though it quickly becomes clear that they had not counted on the power of Geetaa's daintily applied sort-of kung fu. To make things worse for the hoods, Raja just happens to drive by at that moment and, knowing a stone fox in a jam when he sees one, joins in the fight himself.     Now this would probably be a good time to point out that, while I love Geetaa Mera Naam, there are a lot of instances in which I give it points more for what it attempts than for what it actually achieves. While Sadhana is good at the tough girl posturing that her badass streetfighter role requires, when it comes to actually selling the action, Sue Shihomi or Angela Mao she is not. In fact, she's pretty atrocious. As sexist as I know it will sound, the only way I can think of to best describe it is to say that, throughout Geetaa's fight scenes, she appears far more preoccupied with not breaking a nail or heel than she is with defending herself against any mortal threat. (Though, of course, any of my own attempts at athleticism could easily be described in the same terms.) A scene in which she has to run while firing a pistol, in particular, crosses into the territory of self parody. Certainly, Feroz Khan isn't any more convincing, but, in contrast, he's typically spirited in his commitment, doing all kinds of gymnastics and pointless jumps while throwing his fists around -- and he even does a little high bar action in the aforementioned construction site brawl that prefigures Pran's Gymkata-prefiguring moves in Don a couple years later. And while it can definitely be said that the fight choreography -- by the ironically named Mohammed Ali -- is partially to blame, in the final analysis I'd have to conclude that Sadhana, as an action star, is a great romantic lead. To my mind, though, that doesn't really hurt the film, because adequately staged fight sequences would only serve to make Geetaa Mera Naam that much less weird, and would in effect sap it of its very essence. Anyway, having been introduced to Feroz Khan's shirtless chest, Geetaa hits the streets once again, only to be mistaken for Neeta by a group of Neeta's young students. Getting the clue that something unusual is afoot, she has the kids lead her to the jail, where she finally meets Neeta face to face. Gaetaa's mother confirms that Neeta is indeed her long lost twin and, armed with that knowledge, Geetaa vows to make it her mission to clear her sister's name. Suspecting Johnny's involvement in Mohan's death, she approaches Raja and asks to be made a member of the gang. Raja resists at first, but later, when a rival crook tries to immolate a bound Raja, Johnny and monkey on a makeshift pyre, Neeta comes to the rescue (in the process setting off a gas explosion that sends Johnny's enemies' graphically-realized flaming body parts whizzing through the air), and as a result is as good as made. An initiation ceremony follows that involves Geetaa holding her hand over a flame G. Gordon Liddy-style while reciting a loyalty oath, and concludes with Geetaa and Johnny mixing the blood from their sliced fingers. Geetaa Mera Naam is the type of film that never risks leaving anything to audience interpretation -- at points voiceovers are provided to let us hear the anguished thoughts that the characters' extravagantly anguished expressions already make abundantly clear -- and this blood ritual provides one of many occasions for the soundtrack to chime in with a musical refrain about how "blood will recognize blood" (a sentiment which basically sums up the message of all "lost and found" films).     Now a member of the gang, Geetaa finds herself immersed in the shirt optional (for the guys, of course), pleather-clad, rotating bed-riding and oh-my-god-you-can-totally-drink-a-highball-while-floating-in-the-pool high life that the denizens of the underworld according to Geetaa Mera Naam inhabit. As with many of the most entertaining masala films of Geetaa's era, this is visualized by way of hyperbolic costume design and art direction that, in setting out to give the film's predominantly working class audience a tantalizing glimpse of a world of impossible glamour and decadence, creates caricatures of seventies style that go way beyond anything seen in even the most savage contemporary parodies of that era. Finally, after performing various small-time assignments for the gang, Geetaa is recruited, along with Raja, to take part in a daring train robbery that for some reason is plotted out using a toy train and a kewpie doll. The robbery does not go as planned, however, and Raja (who I think was represented by the kewpie doll) is wounded, surviving only due to Geetaa's ministrations. Thus saved by Geetaa a second time, Raja, who is now falling for Geetaa, pledges his indebtedness to her. In response, Geetaa comes clean about her plan to tie Johnny to Mohan's killing and clear her sister's name. This affords Feroz Khan the opportunity to model a series of those aforementioned extravagantly anguished facial expressions as he mulls over whether he should betray his best friend or the woman he loves. Meanwhile, Helen's Savitri is none too pleased about being replaced by Geetaa as Raja's arm candy of choice, and sets out to expose her rival's duplicity to Johnny. When she succeeds in her plan, the stage is set for Geetaa Mera Naam's most astonishing sequence, and for one of the most "I can't believe what my eyes are seeing" song picturizations I've seen in all my long history of indiscriminately devouring these films. The song is "Haan Mujhe Maar Daalo", and it occurs at the moment when Raja and Geetaa return to Johnny's lair, only to find a Johnny who is wised up, wrathful and all too ready to deal out punishment. What follows is that whip-wielding brute Sheru stalking a white-mini-and-go-go-boots-clad Sadhana around the confines of the lair, lashing her mercilessly as she mimes the word of the song through grimaces of pain. At the same time, on the opposite end of the hall, Helen, clad in a spangly chorus girl get-up, dances in a giant bubble bath-filled sauna equipped with disco lights, mirrored walls and its own waterfall.     But Helen's is no solo act in this instance, for dancing with her is a paunchy, pompadoured gentlemen in a clingy, beige polyester bodysuit that, with the addition of a wide belt to complete the ensemble, looks remarkably like one of the uniforms from Space: 1999. Such a physique and outfit would not seem conducive to lustful, serpentine writhing, but that is exactly what this fellow does, and to quite disturbing effect. As these carnal undulations progress, the gestures become more violent, with the man slapping Helen, pulling her hair, and pushing her to the ground as, all the while, she wears an expression of pained ecstasy. The song's refrain is "There is life in death, death in life", and we see both Sadhana and Helen alternately miming the words. But in Sadhana's case it is a mournful yet resigned acceptance of life's tragic nature, while in Helen's case it's a dark celebration of eroticized violence. It's quite remarkable really, and despite the unbelievable bounty of kitsch that it delivers, still manages to be startlingly powerful on an emotional level. And here I was about to go on my standard riff about how I don't really get the music of Laxmikant-Pyarelal. The duo scored dozens upon dozens of pictures during the seventies, and it's true that the small sampling of those I've seen have yet to provide me with evidence of just why they were so widely employed. That's not to say that I think that their scores are bad; its just that they come off as very humdrum and conservative when compared to the wild genre-blending work that composers like R.D. Burman and Kalyanji-Anandji were doing at the time. Not only that, but, to my ears, L-P don't have the gift for infectious melody that those other greats have. Of course, that might just be a matter of these ears of mine being white, Western ones, because Laxmikant-Pyarelal's music sounds like it draws a lot more on traditional Indian themes than that of Burman and Kalyanji-Anandji, who made their mark partially through their incorporation of Western pop styles into their compositions. Whatever the case, Geetaa Mera Naam seemed to me to be the type of film that screamed out for the funky-ass Kalyanji-Anandji treatment, and because of that I approached L-P's score with both trepidation and lowered expectations.     That said -- and upon second listening -- I have to say that the team rose to the challenge and delivered their best score that I've heard so far, built on slinky, minor key melodies, pulsing tabla rhythms, and augmented by staccato stabs of reverbed guitar. In fact, all but one of Geetaa's songs (a Sound of Music style number featuring Neeta and her schoolchildren) are good, and there is even one great one. That would be the pounding, oh-so-manly "Mohabbat Hi Mohabbat", as great a musical showcase for Feroz Khan as there could possibly be. And in its visualization we get to see Feroz mime the song while joyfully doing all of the things he does best: beating guys up, wooing babes, swinging from vines and...well, and also feeding some monkeys. (Interestingly, despite all the monkeys in this movie, there weren't any overt references to Hanuman that I noticed.) One of the things I like about Geetaa Mera Naam is that it gives lip service to pieties without affording much screen time to the pious themselves. In so doing it distinguishes itself as that rare masala film that demonstrates an understanding of just how deeply boring such characters are. As I stated earlier, the character of Chandu, the morally irreproachable policeman played by Ramesh Deo, disappears from the movie for long stretches at a time, and is never around long enough to overstay his welcome when he does show up. Likewise, while it is Neeta's fate that sets the whole plot of the film in motion, we never see Neeta herself again after her jailhouse reunion with Geetaa and her mother -- not even to see her enjoy the freedom that has been so hard won by Geetaa at the movie's conclusion. No, this is undisguisedly a movie about those who live on the other side of the law. And why wouldn't it be, anchored as it is by a performance as commitedly maniacal as Sunil Dutt's? Still, in order to wrap things up, the virtuous must be brought back onto the stage, and so a climax is contrived that brings not only Chandu and Geetaa, Neeta, Johnny and Chandu's wheelchair-bound mom, but also all of Neeta's young students (don't ask how) to Johnny's lair. A truly chaotic free-for-all ensues, with much leaping, whipping and punching on the part of all parties, and, at its peak, Johnny produces a pair of rapiers and engages Raja in a nicely staged swordfight that rages across the entire expanse of the hideout. This whole sequence reminded me a lot of the cast-encompassing fight at the end of the original Casino Royale for all it's everything-and-the-kitchen sink absurdity. And while the intention obviously wasn't outright parody, it's hard to imagine that it wasn't conceived and conducted with a bit of a tongue-in-cheek attitude. In any case, it probably goes without saying that the movie comes through with a climax that is wholly appropriate to all of the fevered insanity that has preceded it, and which will disappoint no one who has been thrilling to that insanity throughout its running time.     As both Keith and I have alluded to elsewhere, exploring Bollywood's past can be a bit of a blind slog for those of us English speakers committed to plumbing that cinema's less reputable depths, especially given the dearth of written material that has anything more to say than how great Mother India and Sholay are. (Which they are, of course, but that's beside the point.) We've all kissed our share of frogs, to be sure, and many of us might have given up long ago if not for the discovery of the occasional twisted gem like Geetaa Mera Naam. After all, how could one turn one's back on a cinema that would give us so much unhinged perversity in the service of a simple morality play about the strength of family bonds? Or so much eye-rending comic book exuberance? Or so much pleather? Geetaa Mera Naam's opening title card, displayed immediately before the title itself, introduces the film as "R.K. Nayyar's Conception of a Super Hit". And R.K. Nayyar's conceptual instincts were apparently right on the mark, because the film indeed turned out to be quite popular with audiences. Sadhana would get her wish and be remembered as a heroine, even though the most indelible image to be taken away from the film might not be so much one of her heroic exploits as it would be her being whipped while wearing a white mini and go-go boots by a guy who looks like a Village People version of a medieval blacksmith. To my mind, however, that does nothing to lessen her status. Just the fact that she made this crazy movie is enough to make her a heroine in my eyes. Labels: Bollywood, Stars: Feroz Khan, Year: 1974 posted by Todd at 12:35 AM | 4 Comments Monday, June 16, 2008The Hero: Love Story Of A Spy Release Year: 2003Country: India Starring Sunny Deol, Preity Zinta, Priyanka Chopra, Amish Puri, Kabir Bedi, Rajpal Yadav Director: Anil Sharma Writer: Shaktimaan Music by Uttah Singh Choreography by Ganesh Acnabya Producers: Ganesh Nankoosingh, Dhirajlal Shah, Hasmukh Shah, Pravin Shah It's with a mixture of pride and fear that I tackle The Hero: Love Story Of A Spy. Fear, because my feeble knowledge of Bollywood films and stars will surely be put to the test. But, by now, I figure I know my way around a spy film, so I am proceeding optimistically, figuring that if I make a botch of it on a Bollywood level, I can at least look it at on an espionage level (and scrape out of this with a small amount of dignity intact). The Hero: Love Story Of A Spy is a big budget Bollywood spectacular. At the time of it's release it was the most expensive Hindi film to date. And it certainly looks like all the money was thrown in all the right places. There are some spectacular action sets pieces, and the location cinematography is excellent. The film opens in Toronto Canada, and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service are honouring a top secret agent from India, Arun Kumah (Sunny Deol). The ceremony is packed with well wishers waving Canadian and Indian flags, and hordes of reporters and photographers all trying to get an interview with Kumah. Kumah's responses are humble and low key. He quickly slips into a waiting limousine and is whisked away to the airport, and on board a plane, which presumably taking him back home.
During the flight, we flash back to three (possibly four) years earlier. Kumah tells us: "The mission started on the day Ishaq Khan, chief of Pakistan's ISI hatched a deadly plot." Ishaq Khan (Amish Puri – For those who haven't being paying attention - Yes he was the evil Mola Ram in Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom) outlines his plan to his superiors unaware that a tiny surveillance camera has been planted in the room by the RAW (Indian Secret Service). The plan is a simple one: to regain control of Kashmir. Because Pakistan cannot openly attack India, the Pakistani government is allowing a group of militants to steal a nuclear bomb and do the dirty work for them. The plan is to be called Operation Nishan. The RAW discredits Pakistan by revealing the footage from the meeting to the world. This stops the attack, but Khan is still trying to cause havoc. Next he is in New York and he is attempting to bribe the U.N. Under Secretary. He wants the Under Secretary to discredit the RAW and Indian Government and insist that the footage was a hoax. His plan almost works, except for one thing. It wasn't the Under Secretary he was bribing, but Agent Arun Kumah in disguise. Khan is arrested and taken away. After his success Kumah is assigned to a new mission. He is to pose as Major Batra, a military commander in Sopore region of Kashmir. To avoid confusion, for the next portion of this review I will refer to Agent Kumah as 'Batra'. Onwards. We finally get to the title sequence. And in true Bollywood fashion we get a song and dance number. For those who have never seen a Bollywood film before, may have been wondering whether a tough violent spy thriller would have songs and dancing in it? In this case, the answer is a big YES. But more about the singing and dancing later. Under the titles Batra drives to his new protectorate accompanied by the squad of soldiers under his control. Along the way they encounter a road block. The villagers of Rishiki have a flock of sheep blocking the road. Usually the villagers demand a donation from travellers before they will move their flock. The soldiers do not respond to blackmail well, and fire their guns into the air. The sheep and villagers scatter. Left behind in the stampede is Reshma (Preity Zinta), a beautiful young girl from the village. Batra takes pity on her and gives her a donation anyway. In general, the villagers of Rishiki are very suspicious of the Indian soldiers. In the past, they have been victimised and treated badly. They do not expect things to change with Batra's arrival. But Batra's mantra is: "Give then love, and you will be loved. Give them hatred, and you will be hated!"
Batra is a benevolent governor and he arrives at the village with provisions for everybody. He provides food for the village, books for the schools, and medicine for the hospital. Eventually he wins over the trust and respect of the Kashmiri people. One of the first to respond to Batra is Reshma. They slowly form an attachment. Initially she just brings him scraps of information about informers and enemy agents. But one afternoon, Batra is involved in a gunfight with four enemy agents who were attempting to cross the border. During the fight, one of the agents produces a grenade and throws in at Batra. Batra evades the blast, but the explosion starts an avalanche in the mountains. Batra flees but is soon run down by the wall of snow that rolls down the mountain. But Reshma finds him and takes him to shelter. He is cold and in shock. She spends the night with him to keep him warm. Now in a James Bond film, this would all seem very tame. But in an Indian film, two un-married people spending the night together is not the done thing. In fact, Reshma's actions could have her driven from the village in disgrace. Well nothing of the sort happens. And Batra and Reshma's love for each other has grown. But Batra is torn between love and duty. Being a good soldier, he chooses duty and prepares to send Reshma across the border on a dangerous mission. But first she must be trained, which leads us into our second musical interlude. The story moves forward and Reshma heads across the border and poses as a servant at a complex run by the Pakistani military. The mission ends up being a dangerous one, and Reshma has to make a mad dash to get back across the border to safety, but she has procured a piece of evidence that shows that Ishaq Khan is not being held in prison, as the majority of the world believe. That is the end of Batra's time in Kashmir, and he is to return to duty elsewhere. But he is not leaving empty handed. He is going to take Reshma with him and they are going to get married. On New Years Eve, as fireworks fill the sky, a very lavish wedding ceremony takes place in a palatial glass domed building. This is the perfect setting for the third big Bollywood dance and song routine. The song is 'Dil mein hai pyar' and thematically its motif's haunt the film. Lyrics, translating as 'May the scorpion get the one who lies', and 'May the scorpion get me if I am lying' are peppered throughout the production. The lyric has a duality about it, applying to both a 'declaration of love' in the case of Batra and Reshma, or as a punishment for wrong doing, in the case of the villains of the piece.
Speaking of the 'Villains' of the piece, Ishaq Khan hasn't taken lightly to Batra's activities in Kashmir. And during the wedding celebration he has planned some entertainment of his own. He has planted a bomb in the building. I must say it is visually a very good set piece when the bomb goes off. One minute, everybody is dancing and singing, and the next, the glass dome of the palace has exploded and a giant orange fireball is engulfing the dancefloor. The palace is next to a river and as the whole building lurches and shakes, the balcony collapses and the guests start to slide into the river, Reshma tries to hold on, but loses her grip and drops into the water. Batra tries to get to her, but another explosion rocks the palace and he is thrown forward, even further into the water. He tries to find Reshma, but the current is too strong. Finally he is swept ashore, where he finds one of Reshma's wedding bracelets. That night, over one hundred people were killed. Many bodies were never found, including Reshma's. The tone of the film changes now, and it becomes quite a violent and explosive revenge flick. Batra, now vows to avenge the death of so many people, and to expose Ishaq Khan's evil plans. I think this is a good point to leave the synopsis. By now you are aware of the motivations of the main characters, and what Batra's mission is. And believe me, this is only the tip of the iceberg. The story still has a long way to go, and quite a few twists and turns as we follow Khan's trail from Pakistan to Canada. Now I know what you're thinking –– well at least what the Bond fans are thinking –– yes the story does have a few similarities to On Her Majesty's Secret Service –– Super Agent falls in love with girl / Marries girl / Girl gets killed on Wedding Day. But I think if you're going do this kind of spy love story, you may as well start with one of the best as a template and work from there, and that's exactly what this film does. The film doesn't stop at Reshma's death. In fact it becomes a catalyst for Batra to become a more insular and ruthless agent (an idea that is being expanded upon in the next Bond film Quantum Of Solace, after the death of Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale).
In a film of this kind, I think it's appropriate to mention the musical interludes. There are six big production numbers in The Hero: Love Story Of A Spy, and each of them is quite impressive. The numbers are Tere shaher ka, Tum bhi na maano, Dil mein hai pyar I, O maari koyal, In mast nighaon se, Dil mein hai pyar II. I do not speak Hindi, so I have no idea what the titles mean, but for those that do, they may provide a little insight into the story. The costumes and the sets and/or locations are truly amazing. There is an astonishing amount of colour and movement on the screen. And the choreography seems to be up to scratch too. If I have a criticism of the musical numbers, is that they are quite lengthy. These are not your three-minute pop songs. Each song takes around six to ten minutes, which is great if you are watching the movie for the singing and dancing. But I am looking at it from the 'spy-movie' perspective, and the movie already clocks in at a healthy 160 minutes. The dance numbers slow the narrative down, and turn what could be a simple stripped down spy-flick into a marathon affair. The film as a whole is an interesting variation on the spy film that I am used to. I am not prepared to say it's a bad film, because it has a lot of good elements. By the same time, I can't call it good, primarily because of it's excessive length, and it's attitude towards Pakistan. Sure, in the real world India and Pakistan have their differences, but presenting the conflict as a violent cartoon, and justifying it with some clumsy jingoistic speeches, isn't the way forward. I think you'll have to make up your own mind about this curiosity. It's a strangely affecting film, that lingers in the memory long after you've watched it –– well, certain scenes anyway. If you're a spy fan, there is a lot of 'classic' spy imagery. If you're a Bollywood fan, there's certainly enough hip shaking and shimmying to please on that level too. Labels: Bollywood, Stars: Amrish Puri, Stars: Sonny Deol, Year: 2003 posted by David at 3:54 AM | 3 Comments Sunday, June 15, 2008Kaala Sona Release Year: 1975Country: India Starring: Feroz Khan, Parveen Babi, Prem Chopra, Danny Dezongpa, Farida Jalal, Imtiaz Khan, Helen, Durga Khote, Keshto Mukherjee, Bipin Gupta, Polson, Abhijeet, Shyam, Gurinder, Mamaji, Agha, Raju Shrestha, Sabina, Habib, Raj Pal, K.N. Singh, P. Jairaj, Satyendra Kapoor, Krishnakant, Karan Dewan, Bhagwan, Maruti, Birbal, Seema Kapoor Director: Ravikant Nagaich Writers: Harish Khatri, Ramesh Pant, V.D. Puranik Cinematographer: Ravikant Nagaich Music: Rahul Dev (R.D.) Burman Producers: Harish Shah, Vinod Shah Kaala Sona is another example of the Basmati -- or "Curry" -- Western, that Bollywood take on the Western that seems to draw more on the European model than the American for its inspiration. Of course, the Amitabh Bachchan classic Sholay, released at roughly the same time, is considered the gold standard of that genre, and Kaala Sona follows along much the same pattern. Like Sholay, for instance, it's a Western in feel rather than period, setting its action in the present day while taking advantage of some of the still relatively untamed regions lying within India's borders. Such an approach allows both films to highlight a favorite Bollywood theme: the urbanized ne'er-do-well who, in being called upon to defend a rural community from a destructive outside force, has his soul awakened to the simple and essential virtues embodied by that community. (In more recent films, that urbanized ne'er-do-well tends to be, more specifically, a Westernized product of the Diaspora, but same idea.) This is not to say that the change we see in Rakesh, Kaala Sona's protagonist, is a particularly gradual or subtle one. In fact, even given the tendency of characters in Bollywood films to go through some jarringly abrupt changes of heart, Rakesh appears to take a particularly fast track in negotiating his character arc. When we first meet him, at the film's opening, he is a shiftless playboy, waking up in his spectacularly hideous penthouse bachelor pad for another busy day of fending off the many gold-digging hoochies who are after his vast inherited fortune. This agenda has to be abruptly set aside, however, when Rakesh receives a telegram from an old family servant, summoning Rakesh to his deathbed. Rakesh makes haste to the servant's side, at which point the servant breaks the news that Rakesh's father, a land developer long thought to have died in an accident, was actually murdered by the notorious bandit Poppy Singh, and that Poppy Singh, long thought to have died himself, is actually alive and well and hiding out in a remote, mountainous region near the country's border. In the blink of an eye, Rakesh is storming the territories with gun in hand. Without the benefit of a training montage or flashback to explain his prowess, we see that, despite his pampered upbringing, Rakesh is not only very good with his fists, but also a lighting fast draw and expert marksman. These skills serve him well, as he is able to quickly and effortlessly dispatch a number of the professional gunmen who are guarding the region's perimeter. Cue the opening credits.     That Rakesh is more convincing as a rugged man of action than as an effete member of the leisure class is not all that surprising, given that he is played by Feroz Khan. Thanks to my exposure to Khan in 1980's Qurbani -- and now Kaala Sona -- I've come to the conclusion that his filmography is one I definitely need to delve into further. Both films bear the stamp of, if not a great actor, then at least a very distinctive presence. Khan, in addition to being its star, was also the director of the sublimely over-the-top Qurbani and, while Kaala Sona (which was directed by Ravikand Nagaich) doesn't go quite as far, it has a similar feeling of raw pulp vitality and absurdly overheated machismo. It doesn't stray too far from the normal Bollywood conventions -- and all of the exuberant trappings that they entail -- but it clearly has a violent B movie heart beating within it, which makes for a pretty entertaining -- and, at times hallucinatory -- combination. After his guns-blazing entry within its borders, Rakesh finds the entirety of the lush Kangra Valley region locked in the stranglehold of the mysterious Popy Singh. Only the estate of the kindly Thakur Ratansing appears to offer any kind of oasis of relative calm, until Rakesh discovers that the Thakur and his family, too, have reluctantly come under the bandit's sway. The Thakur's young son (who looks suspiciously like Weng Weng from For Y'ur Height Only) has been kidnapped by Poppy Singh and his men and, in order to insure the boy's safety, the thakur's eldest daughter, Durga (the stunning beauty Parveen Babi), has been forced to assist in smuggling the opium produced by the gang out of the region. That opium is harvested and refined -- using the local residents as slave labor -- within Popy Singh's virtually impenetrable compound, located high in the mountains across a yawning, unbridge ravine.     Rakesh soon meets up with a vigilante band dedicated to defeating Poppy Singh. Their leader is a strapping young buck named Shera, played by frequent Bollywood heavy Danny Denzongpa. The filmmakers capitalize on the Sikkim-born Denzongpa's exotic looks by making Shera Kaala Sona's resident version of a Hollywood-style Native American, complete with buckskin, fringe and beaded headband. It's a touch that doesn't make a lot of sense if you think about it, but serves to enhance the films' Western movie feel, which undoubtedly took priority over any concerns of authenticity on the part of the producers. In any case, the character of Shera, in addition to providing an opportunity for lots of scenes of male bonding with Rakesh, serves nicely as a love match for the Thakur's youngest daughter, which, once Rakesh and Durga are established as an item, makes for double the normal amount of courtship themed musical numbers. It is also Shera's eventual predicament at the hands of Popy Singh that emboldens Rakesh to single-handedly breach the bandit's compound in an attempt to rescue him and the Thakur's son. I've written before about how Bollywood films often have a tendency to turn into entirely different movies somewhere around their second half, and, with Rakesh's entry into Poppy Singh's compound, Kaala Sona abruptly goes from being a gritty Western to something more akin to one of those surreal old Russian fantasy films. The largely location-shot natural exteriors of the first half give way to a candy-hued sound stage artificiality, including a limitless expanse of poppy fields that appear to have been imagined by someone whose only experience of poppy fields was from watching The Wizard of Oz. This "we've got some crude matte paintings and we're going to use them" visual approach carries through until the film's final action set piece, which takes place on an extraordinarily phony looking ice shelf with flappy cloth icicles hanging from it. Of course, far from hurting Kaala Sona, this trippy turn of events simply serves to make it overall a far more memorable -- and awesome -- viewing experience than it probably would have been otherwise.     And, of course, the evil fairyland setting of Kaala Sona's final act is governed in appropriate fashion, for Popy Singh, when we finally meet him in all his glory, is a freaky monomaniac in the classic Bollywood bad guy mold. Goateed and with one disconcerting, milky eye, he wears a jeweled headband that -- in combination with the long, straight hair that stops at his crown -- makes his bald pate look like a skull cap. Furthermore, his wardrobe is given an Eastern Asian flavor, no doubt with the intention of suggesting a sort of Fu Manchu character. Prem Chopra, the actor who plays Popy Singh, here bears a strong resemblance, in both appearance and manner, to the American actor Andrew Robinson, particularly in that actor's portrayal of the serial killer Scorpio in the original Dirty Harry. If that suggests to you that, with Popy Singh, you'll be getting some prime quality borderline-hysterical villainous ravings coupled with churlish random killings of underperforming minions, you would be right on the money. Kaala Sona features music by the legendary R.D. Burman, which makes for a lot of catchy and propulsive tunes, as well as some very enjoyable production numbers. Probably the best of these is the one set to the psychedelic-tinged "Ek Bar Jaane Jaana", in which Parveen Babi appears before a bunch of drunken louts as a gyrating apparition, splitting -- thanks to some simple yet effective opticals -- into multiples to form a hazy chorus line of one. But the climactic number, which pairs Babi with the always welcome Helen for some frenzied hoofing, is also a visual treat. In addition to its songs, the film boasts an instrumental score complete with some amusing Bollywood flavored stabs at Morricone-style western themes, trilling, non-verbal vocalizations and all.     Having dipped into Bollywood westerns, I have to admit to not knowing just how deep the well goes. I am aware that Feroz Khan made at least one other film in the genre -- Khotte Sikkay, an apparent reworking of For a Few Dollars More -- but, beyond Kaala Sona, Sholay and that, I don't know how many films the genre comprises. But it is to Kaala Sona's credit that I fully intend to find out. There's just something about the combination of the Western genre's Spartan, rough-hewn aesthetic with Bollywood's tendency toward the exuberant and phantasmagorical that I find hard to resist. If you want to join me in this new obsession, Kaala Sona is certainly a good place to start. Labels: Bollywood, Stars: Danny Denzongpa, Stars: Feroz Khan, Year: 1975 posted by Todd at 3:03 PM | 7 Comments Tuesday, June 03, 2008Qurbani Release Year: 1980Country: India Starring: Feroz Khan, Vinod Khanna, Zeenat Aman, Amjad Khan, Amrish Puri, Aruna Irani, Kader Khan, Tun Tun, Shakti Kapoor, Natasha Chopra, Jagdeep, Bob Christo, Mac Mohan, Narendra Nath, Raj Bharti Director: Feroz Khan Writers: K.K. Shukla Music: Kalyanji-Anandji Producer: Feroz Khan Watching Feroz Khan and Vinod Khanna in Qurbani, you might conclude that their characters are simply too confident in their rugged masculinity to have any qualms about being overtly demonstrative in their affections for one another. However, if you consider that it's the knee-weakeningly gorgeous Zeenat Aman, the alleged love interest of both men, who's being wholly ignored while they engage in all their tender hugging, shoulder rubbing and cheek tugging, you might be lead to another conclusion altogether. Of course, men in Bollywood movies are famously free in their capacity for brotherly PDA. That the tendency seems to stand out in especially stark relief in this case is most likely due to the musky, grease-stained backdrop of balls-out, testosterone-bleeding action mayhem that Qurbani provides for it to play out against. In other words, Qurbani is one of those action movies that just goes that extra distance to confirm what a lot of us already thought these movies were all about in the first place. The world of Qurbani is one in which mechanic Bob Christo has a free standing brick wall in his auto body shop just so he can demonstrate the power of his fists to any doubter who happens by -- and a hay stack sits at the end of a jetty for the sole purpose of having a speeding car suddenly burst out from underneath it. Its hero is a famous motorcycle daredevil who's coupled with a famous disco diva, setting the film in a sort of idealized 1970s universe reigned over by the perfect union of Evel Knievel and Donna Summer -- which is sure to produce as its offspring either Chachi or Leif Garrett. Though the film, in keeping with Bollywood tradition, slows down during its middle third to focus on relationship drama, its bulk is so over-saturated with methed-up male aggression that it can't go five minutes without busting out into a fist fight, death-defying physical stunt or car chase. What happens in between those is more often than not a thumping, gaudily staged musical number featuring the aforementioned Ms. Aman, which makes Qurbani the one to beat if you're looking for a standout example of seventies-style Bollywood excess. Qurbani is one of a handful of films that its star Feroz Khan also directed. An actor whose screen career dates back to the early sixties, Khan was at the time experiencing a career renaissance as a he-man action star, of which Qurbani was probably the pinnacle. That the film was a fairly high profile production is evidenced not only by the number of really nice cars its producers were willing to wreck in the course of its production, but also by its all-star cast. Co-star Vinod Khanna was at the peak of his enormous popularity at the time, and Aman had recently been seen opposite superstar Amitabh Bachchan in two of his most successful vehicles of the seventies, Don and The Great Gambler. Her appearance alone, given her recent reinvention as a Bollywood action film femme fatale, serves to a good extent to establish the film's pedigree. In Qurbani, Khan plays Rajesh, a former motorcycle daredevil who has moved on to greater thrills in the world of high stakes thievery. Apprehended in the course of one of his daring burglaries, Rajesh is sent up for a three year stretch, leaving his disco singer girlfriend Sheela (Aman) vulnerable to the attentions of Amar (Khanna), a former driver for the criminal kingpin, Rakka. Sheela stays true to Rajesh, however, and Amar, though clearly smitten, accepts the situation with manly stoicism, though he and Sheela continue to maintain a close friendship. In one of those coincidences that Bollywood movie plots are almost wholly dependent upon, Rajesh, upon his release from prison, happens upon Amar in a sticky situation and save his life. The two, who have not previously met, go on to establish a deep friendship, which deepens even further when Rajesh saves Amar's life a second time. Meanwhile, a creepy/crazy brother and sister duo seek to entice Rajesh to steal back a fortune in jewels that Rakka has stolen from them. When Rajesh double crosses the pair, it leads to a situation that puts both Rajesh and Aman in mortal danger, as well as the sacrifice ("qurbani") that gives the film its title.     Qurbani, for all its strengths, suffers from a bit of sloppy plotting. A couple of plot points dangle unresolved, such as connections that Rajesh and Aman each have with Rakka that are established early on without ever proving to have much purpose. In addition, the love triangle between Rajesh, Aman and Sheela, though somewhat laboriously established, never gets to bear much dramatic fruit, since the film ultimately ends up being more about the love between Rajesh and Aman. As such, the romantic obstacles that would typically be thrown between male and female leads are here thrown between our two men of action, and the dramatic tension of the last act hinges largely on whether the two will mend their friendship and fall back into each others' arms before the film's pyrotechnic finale. Because of this, Zeenat Aman's character is reduced to being both window dressing (few opportunities are missed to have her get soaked with water) and a serially-imperiled pawn in the power plays between the heavies and heroes. In other words, anyone hoping to see her take part in any of the kung fu bad-assery she did in Don will be somewhat disappointed -- until she's shown getting soaked with water, that is, at which point all previous expectations will be quickly and permanently forgotten. What benefits Qurbani is a couple instances of very clever misdirectional casting. The film features two actors who were the top heavies in Bollywood cinema at the time, yet neither are ultimately revealed to be the central villain of the piece. Rakka, for instance, is played by The Brow himself, Amrish Puri, who would go on to reach his villainous apex with his portrayal of Mogambo in 1987's Mr. India. Puri is given his typical glowering introduction right at the top of the film (rocking a Mike Brady perm and Travolta disco suit, no less), menacing Aruna Irani in the role of Jwala. However, Rakka soon thereafter disappears from the picture, and proves to be only an incidental character, while it is Jwala and her brother who ultimately emerge as the real threats to the principals.     The other bad guy on hand is Amjad Khan, the actor who portrayed probably the most iconic villain in the history of Bollywood, Sholay's Gabbar Singh -- and who would, as a result, play almost identical villains in a string of subsequent Amitabh Bachchan action vehicles -- including Nastik, Mr. Narwali and Be-sharam -- throughout the seventies and eighties. Here he portrays the dogged police inspector (who, in a nice whimsical touch, is also named Amjad Khan) who first puts Rajesh away and then, upon his release, tracks his every move, waiting for his first misstep. Khan's mere presence gives the character a menacing edge, but we eventually see that the inspector, while having little faith in Rajesh's ability to reform, is more interested in justice than he is in harassment for its own sake. It's a performance that Khan clearly has fun with, playing off his own imposing demeanor with welcome injections of humor, and it's fun for us to watch as well, especially when we're treated to the actor sharing a goofy musical number with Aman (a rare spectacle, given the closest you'd typically come to seeing Khan taking part in a musical number would be him swigging whiskey from a flask while leering evilly from the sidelines). Another of Qurbani's greatest strengths, as anyone who's seen it will tell you, is its music. Scored by the team of Kalyanji-Anandji, the film boasts a hard hitting Hindi-funk soundtrack that almost makes all of those wide collars and questionably-patterned, tight-fitting flares look good. The film's songs, furthermore, are quite catchy, especially Zeenat Aman's disco numbers, which are further enhanced by their garish picturization. Aman's Sheela seems to have a new back-up band for every performance, the best of which is an all female ensemble of dancers whose incompetent miming on their instruments prefigures Robert Palmer's videos by a good few years.     Once you've watched enough older Bollywood movies, it becomes apparent that their typical narrative structure and pacing don't lend themselves to the kind of wall-to-wall thrills you might expect from contemporaneous films made in, say, Hong Kong or Japan. There are definitely thrills to be had, of course, but they are often too few and far between to satisfy those viewers too impatient to wait for them. Qurbani, however, sets itself apart in that its high points are always well worth the wait, and stick with you enough to make the wait one marked more by anticipation than restlessness. Complementing this is the fact that, in the best Bollywood tradition, there is almost always an outlandish seventies outfit, garish bit of production design, over the top performance or skewed musical number on screen to keep you occupied when nothing's exploding. True, the film does suffer from a bit of the typical middle stretch doldrums, but it handily makes up for that with an out-of-control, action-packed finale, complete with a wild car chase in which Khan and Khanna yuck it up while sending countless innocent motorists to their flaming doom. I'm taking pains to point this out because I know all too well that many of you more adventurous viewers out there have already suffered disappointment at the hands of Bollywood. You've perhaps picked up a dvd because its cover bore a picture of, say, Amitabh Bachchan in shades and a bowtie carrying a scope rifle with something blowing up in the background, only to find that the movie contained therein had a couple of underwhelming action set pieces, but was mostly three hours of some guy crying about his mom. Rest assured, however, that Qurbani is not that film. Delivering on the promise of it's pulsating theme and "Hulk smash" opening titles, the film goes on to entertain the hell out of you -- all the while teaching you that it's okay for two extremely manly men to tenderly cup one another's faces in their hands while looking at each other like they're maybe going to kiss. Labels: Bollywood, Stars: Amrish Puri, Stars: Feroz Khan, Stars: Zeenat Aman, Year: 1980 posted by Todd at 1:27 AM | 2 Comments Saturday, April 26, 2008Be-Sharam Release Year: 1978Country: India Starring: Amitabh Bachchan, Sharmila Tagore, Amjad Khan, Nirupa Roy, Deven Verma, Bindu, Helen, Urmila Bhatt, Uma Dhawan, Dhumal, A.K. Hangal, Iftekhar, Imtiaz, Jagdish Raj Director: Deven Verma Writers: Nerupama, Rahi Masoom Raza, Nayyar Jehan Cinematographer: A.K. Nigam Music: Kalyanji-Anandji Producer: Deven Verma If you wanted to, it seems like you could draw up a sort of family tree of the films Indian superstar Amitabh Bachchan made during his late seventies to mid eighties prime, tracing each of those movies' origins along three very distinct lines, each leading back to a particular career-defining blockbuster that provided the template for much of what was to come. Of course, while Bachchan would star in films that were virtual remakes of Deewaar, Sholay and Don over the course of his career, the lines leading back to those three classics would not always be perfectly straight. For one would also have to consider films like 1978's Be-Sharam, which draw upon elements of all three. Be-Sharam probably bears the strongest resemblance to 1978's Don because, like that film, it's a tale--set against a funky urban backdrop--of a peaceful innocent masquerading as a suave underworld figure. At the same time, like the "angry young man" movies that descended from Deewaar, it includes the theme of the martyred father--his life taken and good name tarnished by the forces of corruption--whose fate motivates the actions of the main character. Finally, as in Sholay, Bachchan is faced with a larger-than-life, seemingly unstoppable villain, who is here played by the very same actor who essayed that role in Sholay, Amjad Khan--who here makes just one of the numerous bad guy turns his iconic portrayal of Sholay's Gabbar Singh appears to have doomed him to.     Now, what Be-Sheram does with these combined elements is nothing original, but it does distill them quite nicely--making the violence nice and bloody, the men's wear as funky-hideous as you could ask for--and wraps them up in a nice, fairly tight little package. In fact, while lacking the sheen and dramatic flair of its more crafted antecedents, it may exceed some of them in terms of consistent--by Bollywood standards, mind you--energy and pacing. All of which is to say that, yes, Be-Sheram is a by-the-numbers Amitabh action movie, but it's also a very good by-the-numbers Amitabh action movie. In Be-Sheram, Bachchan plays Ram, a humble insurance agent whose father, a righteous man and dedicated pacifist, manages to get elected to public office despite ample interference from the aforementioned forces of corruption. One of these shadowy figures behind the scenes is Prince Digvijay Singh (Khan), who, like the seedy remnant of monarchy that he is, finds the idea of adapting his lifestyle to one amenable to the rule of law and democratic will distasteful. Singh dispatches his sister, the Princess Rinku (Sharmila Tagore) to insinuate herself into young Ram's life by posing as a slumming college student, and thus keep tabs on the family's movements. Of course, Rinku quickly falls in love with Ram in earnest, leaving the Prince to consider plan B.     Since no honest man can survive long in such a hotbed of malfeasance, the enemies of Ram's father soon succeed in embroiling him in a manufactured scandal and driving him from office, after which he dies in an apparent suicide. The grieving Ram is promptly called to the office of the police commissioner (played by Iftekhar, who played a virtually identical role in Don), who informs him that his father's death was actually a murder, and that it was perpetrated by the forces of a mysterious drug smuggling kingpin known only as Mr. Dharamdas. Furthermore, the commissioner tells him, the authorities have reason to believe that Mr. Dharamdas and the Prince are one in the same, but have yet to find the proof, since the base of his smuggling operation remains hidden. Being that the grieving son of a murder victim who has no training in law enforcement is the ideal choice to take part in a delicate undercover operation, the commissioner asks Ram to pose as a fellow smuggler in order to gain the Prince's confidence and get the information needed to bring him in. The commissioner makes some reference to giving Ram some kind of "training" which we don't actually get to see, but the next time we see Ram, it's obvious that that training mainly involved him learning how to be a seventies-style badass. Posing as a South African diamond smuggler with the very un-South African name of Chandrashekar, Ram glides through the upper reaches of the underworld swathed in hip-hugging seventies finery with fists always at the ready to do his talking. Of course, everyone is fooled, including--initially--Princess Rinku (because, I suppose, exact duplicates of people are always turning up in these movies, and hence pose no particular cause for concern). Now armed with professional police training in suavity and sweet talk, Ram/Chandrashekar sets about romancing both Rinku and the Prince's mistress Manju in order to gain access to the inner circle, thus setting the stage for his confrontation with the Prince.     And the Prince, as portrayed by Amjad Khan, is a winning amalgam of all of that actor's most time-tested villainous tics--blessed with a sweaty brow, leering eyes, and a tendency toward bouts of unhinged giggling. Khan is a master of a particular style of slow-burn, maniacal tantrum, which starts out quietly and tentatively, with a hint of wounded sincerity, then subtly becomes more taunting until, suddenly, like a Pixies song, it burst into full blown homicidal rage. In fact, just as Be-Sharam is a workmanlike distillation of a certain type of Amitabh movie, Khan's performance in it is a workmanlike distillation of the type of performances he typically gives in those movies. Which is not to say that the Prince is a generic character, by any means. For one, his obsessive fondness for snakes and trademark use of cobras to dispatch his enemies both sets him apart from his peers and makes for some of the film's best moments. Scattered among the cobra killings, fistfights, and Amitabh's modeling of the latest fashions, Be-Sharam, of course, features musical numbers. Lucky for us, these are all written by Kalyanji-Anandji, a team that has become a staple of hipster Bollywood music comps thanks to their hard hindi-funk soundtracks to movies like Don, Qurbani, and Bombay 405 Miles. In addition to their driving, wah-wah drenched instrumentals, the duo also had a knack for writing extremely catchy, Western pop flavored songs, of which many of the songs in Be-Sharam are fine examples. The song "Mere Kis Kaam Ki" in particular will stick in your head for days. But, in terms of presentation, my favorite number has got to be "Iraade Dil Tumhara", a climactic piece featuring Bollywood dance queen Helen. Leading us into the film's explosive final act, this bit follows something of a tradition for such numbers, in which the hero sits impassively listening while an anonymous item girl sings about all of the bad things that are about to happen to him. Strangely enough, this song follows not too far on the heels of one in which Ram similarly watches Princess Rinku performing in a pageant and is struck by the fact that she is singing about how she has seen through his disguise. Helen, similarly, sings of how Ram's cover has been blown--and with much more at stake--but this time the message is lost on him. Without spelling out too much, the consequence of his heedlessness leads to a prolonged brawl involving a hidden lair beneath a cemetery, a tiger pit, snake wrestling and, of course, Ram's mom (played, as is so often the case in Amitabh's films of this vintage, by Nirupa Roy).     While comparatively lean, Be-Sharam still bulges in places with the type of padding that we've come to rely on from Bollywood. (How else, after all, would the film reach its full two-and-a-half-hour running time?) Probably the most obvious example of this is the screen appearance by the film's director, Deven Verma, who--anticipating Eddie Murphy's midlife career by a good thirty-odd years--not only plays Ram's comic relief buddy, Laxman, but also Laxman's comic relief mom and comic relief dad, none of whom seem to have much utility in terms of the actual story--and whose comedic necessity in a film where a grown man wears a polka dot tuxedo with a straight face is doubtful at best. Despite this, however, Verma deserves credit as a director for his efforts elsewhere to streamline Be-Sharam, especially in his treatment of the film's elements of family drama--usually something of a narrative log-jam in these action films--which are here nicely integrated within the larger plot. Further serving to grease Be-Sharam's narrative wheels is the fact that, while it cribs elements from some of Amitabh's most iconic films, unlike those films, it doesn't seem to have much in the way of larger themes of its own that it's trying to put across. As such, it can simply use it's resemblance to those other films as a terse signifier of those themes (the fetters of family honor, the value of friendship and community, etc.), while it goes briskly about its real business of being a violent and somewhat trashy little potboiler. This, of course, gives the movie something of a throwaway feel, but that just contributes all the more to it being such a fun experience. After all, if you're reading this review in the first place, you're well aware of the fact that a movie doesn't need to be a classic to be great. And while Be-Sharam is certainly no substitute for Deewaar or Sholay, there is something to be said for how it so compactly serves up the undiluted joys of Amitabh at his most funky and fightingest. Labels: Action, Bollywood, Stars: Amitabh Bachchan, Year: 1978 posted by Todd at 9:24 PM | 2 Comments Saturday, April 19, 2008Toofan Release Year: 1989Country: India Starring: Amitabh Bachchan, Goga Kapoor, Meenakshi Sheshadri, Amitra Singh, Farooq Shaikh, Kamal Kapoor, Raza Murand, Pran, Sushma Seth, Zarina Wahab, Sudhir Dalvi, Ramesh Deo, Mahesh Anand, Jack Gaud, Bob Christo Director: Ketan Desai Writers: Salim Khan, K.K. Shukla Cinematographer: Peter Pereira Music: Anu Malik Producer: Manmohan Desai Promote It: Digg | del.icio.us Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan and ramshackle low budget superhero spectacle are both subjects that get a lot of play here at Teleport City, and when a film brings the two of them together we're pretty much fated to cover it, no matter how underwhelming that film may be. Fortunately the 1989 movie Toofan comes to us wrapped in some particularly interesting context. It's mildly depressing context, mind you, but interesting nonetheless. These days, nearly forty years into his career, it's hard to imagine Amitabh Bachchan being any more famous or respected than he is. When he's not gracing some freshly minted Bollywood blockbuster with his distinguished presence, he's appearing in public as the proud patriarch of a white hot acting dynasty comprised of his superstar son and daughter-in-law, Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai. Hell, even Stephen Colbert has given him shout-outs. This combined with the amount of attention paid to his early successes might lead one to get the impression that his was a smooth and gradual--if you will, Al Pacino-like--transition from his breakthrough days as an iconic angry young man to the role of venerated elder statesman. That impression, however, would be quite wrong. In fact, the road that lead from Bachchan's funky and fighting late seventies heyday to his living legend status today is one marked by some considerable stretches of rough pavement, of which Toofan is one small artifact. Though the youthful Amitabh personified the hardscrabble working class hero onscreen, the reality of his circumstances was a bit different, a reality underscored by the fact that, when he first arrived in Bollywood, he did so armed with a letter of recommendation written by Indira Gandhi herself. Amitabh was a lifelong friend of Ghandi's son Rajiv Ghandi, and his family (headed by his father, the renowned poet Harivanish Rai Bachchan) enjoyed a close relationship with the Nehru-Gandhi clan. These close ties would serve to alter Bachchan's career path dramatically after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, when Rajiv, now the newly named Prime Minister of India, asked Bachchan to support him by seeking a parliamentary seat as a member of his Indian National Congress party. At the time, Amitabh was still at the peak of his phenomenal popularity. His serious injury during the filming of Coolie the previous year had lead to a national vigil that saw people lining up at temples to give prayers in his name, and the finished film was a runaway success as a result. Given that he was easily the most famous person in India at the time, popular election was a simple matter, and Bachchan ended up winning the parliamentary seat for his home town of Allahabad by the widest margin in Indian history.     Bachchan has since freely admitted that he was in way over his head in the political arena, and the rigors of his new calling ended up removing him completely from the acting sphere (though he would, thankfully, take time out from overseeing matters of state to make the wonderfully insane Mard). Things would become much worse for him with the eruption of the Bofors Scandal, ignited when evidence surfaced of Rajiv Gandhi and some associates receiving kickbacks--brokered by an Italian businessman who was a close friend of the Gandhi family--from the Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors in exchange for lucrative government contracts. The matter was one of the biggest corruption scandals in the history of Indian politics and, while Bachchan was ultimately cleared of involvement, he was tainted by association nonetheless. Thanks in no small part to the aggressive attentions of a press drunk with the smell of celebrity blood, the public perception of him shifted away from that of a populist hero toward that of a representative of an appetitive and hypocritical elite. Understandably burned by the experience, Bachchan resigned from his seat after serving three years, vowing never to return to politics again, and began the process of getting his acting career back on track. Unfortunately, Bachchan returned to a Bollywood that had largely moved on in his absence. A new batch of young stars had emerged, and new types of films--reflecting what was considered to be a more hopeful and less "angry" time--were being made. Not helping matters was the fact that Amitabh--thanks in no small part, I'm sure, to the stress of his political adventures--had not aged all that gracefully over the intervening years. He'd put on a few pounds, and his once youthful face had become somewhat puffy and haggard looking--neither of which are good things for an actor who has made his fame as an exemplar of burning youth. In short, Bachchan was a star in desperate need of reinvention. However, what successes such a reinvention might have engendered we will never know, because what the forces guiding Bachchan's career--or, indeed, Amitabh himself--chose to do instead was to desperately cling to what had worked in the past. As a result, Bachchan closed out the eighties with a string of resounding box office failures. Among the earliest volleys in this barrage of cinematic duds was Toofan. Toofan was one of a small handful of films directed by Ketan Desai. Though he would go on to become a successful producer, what was most noteworthy about Desai at the time was that he was the son of director Manmohan Desai, who had directed a number of Amitabh Bachchan's beloved hits, including Amar Akbar Anthony, Parvarish, and the aforementioned Coolie, as well as numerous successful masala entertainers for other stars, such as the delirious Dharmendra-fronted costume epic Dharam-Veer. Unfortunately, Manmohan had chosen the previous of Amitabh's late eighties flops, Gangaa Jamunaa Saraswathi, as his directorial swan song, and--perhaps due to failing health--served only as a producer on Toofan, which would be the last film he worked on. Manmohan's is just one example of a power who had fueled Bachchan's previous success having only a vestigial involvement in Toofan, the other being that of Salim Khan, just half of the screenwriting team--completed by Javed Akhtar--responsible for creating Amitabh's most career-defining roles, including Zanjeer, Sholay, Deewaar and Don. I'm not sure what happened between Khan and Akhtar, but they appear to have parted ways after 1987's Mr. India, which is admittedly a career peak that would be pretty hard to top.     You get a sense with Toofan of a creative team that's grasping at straws, trying to assemble various successful elements from past films, along with a few tentative new ones, all in a somewhat messy attempt to rekindle their star's earlier heat. Manmohan Desai was known for his "lost and found" dramas, which featured families torn apart by fate only to be reunited after much travail at the film's conclusion, and one example of those, the aforementioned Amar Akbar Anthony, had been one of Amitabh's most loved films, so that element is included. Bachchan also had great success with films in which he played dual roles, such as in Don and The Great Gambler, so that element is included as well. Finally, during the late years of his peak, Bachchan's stature was such that his characters--such as those in Coolie and Mard--had begun to take on an almost superheroic cast, so it seems it was decided to push things just that much further and make his character in Toofan an actual costumed superhero. The prologue that establishes Toofan's premise is elegant in its simplicity. Psyche! Seriously, given that this is a Manmohan Desai-produced masala film in the "lost and found" mold, you can be assured that simplicity has nothing to do with it. In fact, the plot of Toofan is so serpentine in its convolutions that it makes the labyrinthine Dharam-Veer look like No Exit by comparison. Once the film starts rolling, we still have thirty minutes to go before the opening credits, so just sit tight. Ramesh (Ramesh Deo), a magician and escape artist, and Hanuman Prasad (the mighty Pran), a noble and upright police inspector, are friends. Ramesh and his very pregnant wife leave Bombay to visit Hanuman in his hometown of Udhampur on the occasion of his also very pregnant wife giving birth. However, on arriving they find that Hanuman's wife has died in the process of birthing twin boys, and the shock of this revelation causes Ramesh's wife to faint and fall down a flight of stairs. She miscarries as a result, and in response to Ramesh's concern that his still unconscious wife will not be able to survive the news, Hanuman says, basically, "here, I have two", and gives Ramesh one of his twins to raise as his own. Time goes on, and Ramesh schools his adopted young son, Shyam, in the magician's trade, while Hanuman trains his son, Toofan, in being righteous and upright. Unfortunately, Shyam's magician training is abruptly cut short one day when Ramesh fails to execute the old "locked box submerged in a body of water" escape, a turn of events that prompts the child to vow that he will himself master the feat one day.     Young Toofan's relationship with his dad is equally short-lived. Asked by his superior, ACP Sharma (Kamal Kapoor), to escort a large shipment of gold on its way to the reserve bank, Hanuman finds himself made the patsy in a scheme between the corrupt Sharma, his lieutenant Patil, and the notorious bandit Shaitan Singh (Goga Kapoor) to steal the gold for themselves, and is fired from the force in disgrace as a result. The wild-eyed Shaitan Singh, however, has a bad habit of shooting absolutely everyone who works with or for him (a habit that makes it remarkable that he's consistently able to find new recruits for his gang), and when he does the same to Patil, the crooked cop uses his last breath to inform Hanuman of Sharma and Shaitan Singh's involvement in framing him. Rushing off to capture Shaitan Singh, who is escaping by train, Hanuman leaves a note written on a handy chalkboard for his sleeping son, detailing the particulars of Patil's confession. What follows is some classic Action Pran as Hanuman jumps the speeding train and manages to cuff Shaitan Singh before the two of them end up in a violent brawl that leaves Hanuman hanging from the train car, still cuffed to Shaitan Singh, as a train approaches in the opposite direction on a parallel track. Unfortunately for Hanuman, Shaitan Singh is just about as badass as these Bollywood bandits come, and cuts off his own fucking hand in order to send Hanuman crashing beneath the wheels of the oncoming train. At the moment of his father's death, a violent wind blows open the shutters in young Toofan's room, awakening him, and some highly selective drops of rain manage to erase both the names of Shaitan Singh and, partially, ACP Sharma from the blackboard, while leaving the rest of his father's message intact. Toofan none too wisely runs with the blackboard to ACP Sharma, who, obviously not having mastered the poker face, freaks out and chases him away (though, strangely, without taking the blackboard, an oversight which enables Toofan to improbably hold on to it and the message it contains--apparently without once thinking to transcribe it in some more portable and permanent format--for the many intervening years between its first being scrawled and the events of Toofan's denouement). From this point on, Toofan is pretty sure that Sharma had something to do with his dad's death, and vows to find proof of that fact, along with the identity of Sharma's mysterious partner in crime. But to do so he'll need some divine assistance. The young Toofan prays to the Hindu monkey god Hanuman for help, and in response to his plea a violent wind sweeps through the temple, causing a nifty six-shooter crossbow to fall from the shrine and land at his feet--and it's not an ornate, mythological-looking crossbow, either, but a rather sporty one with the brand name clearly visible on the front. A robed sage says something about a righteous cyclone ("toofan") sweeping through the land to clean it of wrongdoers, and there we have our origin story. Meanwhile, Shaitan Singh goes to see a doctor about the profusely bleeding stump that's cropped up where his hand used to be and the doctor, having seen Shaitan Singh's picture in the paper, dopes him up and calls the police, after which Shaitan Singh is carted off to jail, swearing eventual vengeance against the doctor.     Now, allow me to backtrack a bit to discuss the matter of Hanuman. I am woefully ignorant about the Hindu religion, and what I do know about Hanuman, as with many things, I know only from watching movies. But based upon that meager amount of no doubt highly dubious information, I think that Hanuman is awesome. As he's depicted in the several Bollywood "mythologicals" I've seen, he's similar in character to the Monkey King from Chinese folklore as he's portrayed in the Shaw Brothers "Journey to the West" movies. His unwavering sense of justice is tempered by an antic sense of mischief, and he's just as likely to shrink himself down to bite-size in order to tamper with an adversary's insides as he is to swell to enormous proportions to simply step on him or kick him into the next life. Plus, he's the only Hindu deity, as far as I know, who is friends with Ultraman, as evidenced by the Thai movie The 6 Ultra Brothers vs. The Monster Army--which, to my mind, is the highest endorsement that any religious figure could attain. If Ultraman is on board, then I'm just a miracle away from signing up myself. Anyway, we now advance forward twenty-seven years to the introduction of Toofan as we will know him for the rest of the movie, prompted by a gang of scruffy bandits terrorizing a wedding party. Toofan's entrance is announced by a cyclone, and accompanied by a snappy theme song that is by far the highlight of an otherwise unremarkable score by Anu Malik. When we see him, it's Amitabh wearing his best mien of righteous fury, dressed in black genie pants with a bright orange cape, sash and scarf, and charging in on horseback with his trusty crossbow ready for action. As his theme song thunders away on the soundtrack, Toofan dispatches most of the bandits by means of arrows that are shot with uncanny speed and precision, then kung fus the stragglers, all the while booming away in a voice equipped with its own reverb chamber, just to further underscore his divine origins. Now, admittedly, Amitabh does look slightly silly. But, still, Toofan the superhero sounds kind of cool, doesn't he? And, having established that, we next encounter what turns out to be the major problem with Toofan the movie. Because, once this scene has concluded, we will not see Toofan again for a solid hour, and will instead be spending hard time with Toofan's twin brother, Shyam, as irritating a comic ne'er-do-well as has ever been seen. While there is some awkwardness to the less-than-fighting-trim Bachchan's portrayal of Toofan, it's still a role that he's relatively at home with, whereas his performance as Shyam reeks of desperation. In his efforts to sell Shyam as a lovable goofball, he mugs away frantically like a coked-up borscht belt comedian, and the result is unbearably corny and cloying. Of course, we've seen Big B in comedic mode before (such as in the role of the double Vijay in Don and in much of Amar Akbar Anthony), but those performances were aided, first of all, by his confidence as an actor, which kept him short of overselling in the manner that he is here, and, secondly, by stories that kept those characters integrated within a narrative context that didn't leave them just hanging out to become little more than annoying, human-shaped roadblocks to audience involvement, which is what happens here.     I'm going to take the Shyam portion of Toofan at speed because, even though a bunch of things happen during that hour, very little of them have any impact on the larger plot of the movie. Suffice it to say that Shyam, who is making his living as a magician performing at children's parties (and whose magic consists of a combination of cheap novelty store gags and Bewitched style special effects--confusing the issue of whether he's supposed to be performing sleight-of-hand or actual magic) gets hoodwinked by a corrupt hotelier and his gang into aiding in a robbery, and ends up in trouble with the police as a result. After he is bailed out by his cab driver friend, Gopal (Farooq Shaikh), the two of them set about trying to prove his innocence, setting in motion a series of searingly unfunny slapstick episodes helped not in the least by lots of under-cranked camera work and wacky sound effects. Finally things turn serious when the gang tries to silence Shyam, and Gopal, throwing himself in front of an oncoming car to protect him, ends up losing both of his arms. After leaving the hospital, Gopal, not wanting to be a burden on his friend, goes to visit his family, who have been living at home with his father while he makes his living in Bombay. As fate and the frantic loose-end tying of screenwriter Salim Khan would have it, Gopal's father's home is in Udhampur, both the stomping ground of Toofan and the hiding place of the gold stolen by Shaitan Singh at the beginning of the movie--and Gopal's father, furthermore, is the very same doctor who turned Shaitan Singh in all those years ago. (Gopal's homecoming also provides us with a replay of that famous scene in Sholay in which the wind whips away the blanket wrapped around Sanjeev Kumar's shoulders, dramatically revealing that he has lost his arms.) Meanwhile, back in the movie that we wish the rest of Toofan was more like, Shaitan Singh has escaped from prison, a feat he has accomplished in part by means of setting himself on fire (badass). To be honest, I'm not sure that the whole setting himself on fire part was all that necessary to his escape, but the shot of him emerging from his cell in slow motion, on fire, while shooting everyone in sight was definitely necessary to me being able to make it through the remaining hour of Toofan. Once doused, Shaitan Singh makes his way to Udhampur and regroups with the members of his old gang whom he hasn't already shot, who fill him in about Toofan. Toofan's presence, they tell him, has not only kept their criminal endeavors in check, but also emboldened the local populace, a situation that must be dealt with if they are to successfully extract their treasure from its hiding place (a task which now, for reasons I won't go into, will involve excavating a temple that has been built over the burial site). Shaitan Singh manages to draw Toofan out, after which a tremendous fight ensues, ending with Toofan dangling perilously over the edge a sheer waterfall. Unfortunately, the only thing that's keeping Toofan from falling is the fact that he's handcuffed to Shaitan Singh's prosthetic hand, which comes with a convenient spring latch that, when released, sends the poorly composited Amitabh/Toofan tumbling down into the raging waters below. Now free to terrorize as they please, Shaitan and his gang go to take vengeance against Gopal's father, killing Gopal and his wife--and orphaning his young son--in the process.     Soon after, Shyam arrives in Udhampur looking for Gopal. Since Shyam is still considered a criminal and is jumping bail, the Bombay police arrive hot on his heels, but instead find the unconscious Toofan at the base of the waterfall and take him back with them under the mistaken impression that he is Shyam. Upon finding himself in Bombay, the noble Toofan ends up taking on the guise of Shyam out of compassion for Shyam's long suffering mother, who is obviously so incapable of handling bad news that anyone within a five mile radius of her would rather attempt to shift the tides than be the bearer of it. So, in case you missed it, let me point out that we were once again given a brief scene of Toofan being awesome to the accompaniment of his snappy theme song, immediately after which he was again effectively removed from the action, not to return in superheroic form for another good chunk of the movie. Instead, as might be predicted, Shyam finds himself convinced to impersonate Toofan in order to thwart the bandits and embolden the populace, and so, not only do we have an absence of Toofan, but an absence of Toofan filled by Shyam's cloyingly goofy impression of him. Shyam's stint as Toofan goes pretty much as would be expected, except for one odd aspect that I wanted to point out. In those instances where Shyam does do battle with Toofan's foes, he does so with his magic, and his magic, as I've alluded to earlier, appears to be actual magic, including the abilities to levitate himself and others at will, make objects in plain sight turn into other objects (such as when he turns an attacker's sword into a snake), vanish things into thin air, and instantly hypnotize people to do his bidding. In short, Shyam's powers are far more limitless and god-like than those of the real Toofan, who basically just hits people and shoots them with arrows, yet these scenes are played as zany comic relief bits. In fact, when Shyam really wants to get results, he uses his fists, even though, from what we've seen, it looks like he could simply wiggle his nose and make Shaitan Singh and his men disappear. Of all the weirdly sloppy plot elements that litter Toofan, I think this one may have been the weirdest and the sloppiest--but, then again, that may just be because it's the one that I'm focusing on at the moment. Back in Bombay, Toofan's impersonation of Shyam leads to a lot of other business that has no bearing whatsoever on the main plot of Toofan, but to its credit does ultimately lead to Toofan, as Toofan, returning to Udhampur to settle things once and for all with Shaitan Singh. And it is here, in like fashion, that the movie Toofan finally becomes a Toofan that we can all get behind. Shaitan Singh and his men perform a daring recovery of the stolen gold by burrowing from underneath the temple through the roof of a conveniently located train tunnel, finally dumping the treasure into a waiting freight car, after which Shaitan Singh celebrates by summarily blowing away his entire crew. Shyam tries to intervene, but ends up handcuffed to Gopal's son in a model train boxcar that plunges off an elevated bridge into the river below (meaning it's time to make good on that vow to successfully execute that failed stunt of his father's). ACP Sharma shows up to claim his share of the gold from the traitorous Shaitan Singh, leading to a bloody confrontation. Finally, Shaitan Singh commandeers a plane to make his getaway, with Toofan in hot pursuit. In what is by miles the film's most memorable scene, Toofan uses his crossbow to shoot a line into the plane--the end of which spears itself not only through the floor of the plane, but through Shaitan Singh's foot as well--and then scales up the line (which hangs slack in a straight vertical line from the underside of the airborne--and no doubt rapidly moving--plane) into the plane's cabin for a final balls-out smackdown with his nemesis.     Admittedly, the final twenty minutes of Toofan are amazing--so amazing, in fact, that if the rest of Toofan were even half that good it would probably be one of my all time favorite films in which a somewhat out-of-shape guy in an ill-fitting superhero costume runs around kicking ass. By a fair account, there are probably about forty-five minutes to an hour of really good movie hidden within Toofan and, if I was inclined to do such things, I would take that forty-five minutes to an hour of really good movie and cobble together my own version of Toofan, which would consist of the fight between Pran and Shaitan Singh on the train, every scene where Toofan is riding around shooting people with his crossbow to the accompaniment of his snappy theme music, Shaitan Singh escaping from prison on fire, and those final twenty minutes. Of course, what I would then have would be something very far from the crazy Bollywood masala movie that Toofan was obviously intended to be. That is not to say, however, that the fault with Toofan lies necessarily within the sprawl of its story or the convolutions of its plot. In fact, one of the great pleasures of watching a well made masala film of this type--like, say, Amar Akbar Anthony or Dharam-Veer--is in seeing the ingenious, albeit far-fetched, ways in which all of the many disparate strands of character and circumstance that the filmmakers have laid out ultimately end up falling into place. The problem with Toofan is that so much of what it lays out never really comes to anything, and only serves to distract from the parts of the movie that are actually entertaining. For instance, note that I am only now mentioning the film's two female leads, Meenakshi Shehadri and Amrita Singh, who are so poorly integrated into the story as to become superfluous, and who disappear from the film without remark well before the climax as a result. (It appears that no trouble was taken to even give Amrita Singh's character a name, despite the fact that it seemed like she was being set up to be Toofan's love interest.) In like fashion, the whole subplot involving the crooked hotelier who frames Shyam--which is revisited at length during the segment of the film in which Toofan is masquerading as Shyam--never ties into the larger plot in any significant way, and isn't interesting enough on its own to merit the amount of time it's given--even though it provides an opportunity for the appearance of the always welcome Bob Christo.     All of this is a shame not just for the audience, who must suffer through Toofan's vast stretches of unengaging filler, but also for Amitabh Bachchan, who so desperately needed for the movie to be a hit. Because, as I've indicated, Toofan contains all the makings of a very entertaining film; it's just that those involved in its creation were too busy throwing anything that they thought might stick at it to take stock of exactly what those makings were. And so a lot of fun, cheesy thrills--as well as a serviceably heroic performance by its star and some pretty well-staged scenes of violent action--ended up getting buried in a storm of half-baked contrivances and unnecessary shtick. As a result Toofan was a film that was pretty hard to love--and Amitabh was still left with a long climb ahead of him in his struggle back to the top. And to belabor things, perhaps the image of Amitabh wearing a somewhat unflattering and ungainly costume while trying to climb up a rope into a moving airplane provides a suitable metaphor for that struggle. He would eventually succeed, of course, but not until a lot of time had passed in the wake of Toofan's inauspicious release. As mentioned earlier, more box office disappointments would follow, and in response Amitabh decided to take another break from acting to try his luck on the corporate side of the entertainment industry. The result was Amitabh Bachchan Corp., Ltd. (ABCL), an ambitious film production, marketing and distribution company. Unfortunately, that venture failed spectacularly due to mismanagement within just a couple of years, and Amitabh returned to acting once again, only to produce yet another string of sinkers. Strangely, the thing that facilitated Amitabh's eventual return to the diamond glow of superstardom was not any kind of breakthrough film role at all, but rather his becoming host of the Indian version of the TV quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? By becoming a familiar presence in their homes week after week, the Big B once again endeared himself to the Indian public, making them receptive again to his presence on the big screen. This was also helped, I imagine, by the fact that, with a string of grizzled patriarch roles, Amitabh was playing characters appropriate to his age for the first time in 20 years.     So there you have it, boys and girls: The legend of Toofan, a story of crashing falls from great heights, tears, struggle, and ultimate triumph over adversity, all far more interesting then the legend that the makers of Toofan the movie set out to tell. So next time you're watching some current Bollywood hit and you see Amitabh Bachchan making a cameo as an aging kingpin or a lovable uncle with an annoying catchphrase, keep in mind that this is a man for whom the privilege of phoning in performances in fluff roles that are largely the result of stunt casting has been especially hard won. But I jest, of course. Being huge fans and supporters of Amitabh, we here at Teleport City wouldn't have wished anything but a happy ending for him. That doesn't mean I'm not going to send him a bill for the time I spent watching Toofan, though. Labels: Action: Superheroes, Bollywood, Stars: Amitabh Bachchan, Year: 1989 posted by Todd at 6:13 PM | 6 Comments Thursday, March 27, 2008Tahalka Release Year: 1992Country: India Starring: Dharmendra, Amrish Puri, Mukesh Khanna, Javed Jaffrey, Ekta Kapoor, Aditya Pancholi, Naseeruddin Shah, Prem Chopra, Sonu Walia, Pallavi Joshi, Shammi Kappor, Shikha Swaroop, Bob Christo Director: Anil Sharma Writers: Bimla Sharma, Shyam Goel Cinematographer: Anil Dhanda Music: Anu Malik Producer: K.C. Sharma The lines between good and evil in Bollywood movies tend to be pretty broadly drawn, but never so broadly, it seems, as when the great Amrish Puri was cast as the villain. Deep of the voice, wild of the eye, and massive of the brow, Puri, though a versatile actor who played many diverse roles in his four decade career, truly made his mark with his portrayals of over-the-top bad guys in countless Bollywood action and masala movies (And yes, yes, I know...as Mola Ram in that Indiana Jones movie. Give it a rest, for chrissakes!). Many of these portrayals were iconic, but, while Puri would star in nearly four hundred films by the time of his death in 2005, there is one film for which he is remembered most of all. Tahalka, however, is not that film. In fact, judging by the paucity of information I encountered when trying to glean such simple facts about the film as the year in which it was made, I get the impression that nobody much remembers Tahalka at all. About an equal number of sites list its release date as either 1982 or 1992, and also spell it's name variably as "Tahalka" or "Tehelka". A couple of filmographies for Puri actually list both a "Tahalka" for 1982 and a "Tehelka" for 1992, though I'm pretty sure that those are both references to the same film. Given this, I think it's safe to say that Tahalka--or whatever it's called--is not held in the same fond regard as certain other of its stars' cinematic vessels.     As for when Tahalka was made, I think it's pretty safe to go with 1992. For one thing, Dharmendra looks really old in this movie. Furthermore, the film's songs--written by Anu Malik--are terrible in that distinctly early 90s Bollywood way, filled with clunky dance rhythms and people shouting out random English phrases like they were Japanese magazine covers with Tourette's Syndrome. (I'm talking Karisma Kapoor terrible, people.) But what nails down Tahalka's vintage most of all is how it so clearly post-dates the 1987 film Mr. India, a fact evidenced by how obviously the filmmakers intended for Puri's character, General Dong, to echo his iconic portrayal of the super villain Mogambo in that earlier film, right down to the endlessly repeated catchphrase. But, this issue aside, what is it about Tahalka that has relegated it to such forgotten status? What could be so wrong with a film--one of a not all that distant vintage and featuring fairly bankable stars--that the record of it could become so murky in the scant intervening years? Perhaps to find out, what we need to do is listen to Tahalka, and by that means let the film itself tell us exactly where the problem lies.     The disclaimers at the beginning of Bollywood movies, which are often in English, are things of beauty in themselves, and they're something that I've only recently learned to pay attention to. Rather than being generic boilerplate drawn up by a team of faceless lawyers, they tend to be a kind of freeform verse that gives us a fascinating window into the psyche of the filmmakers. One of my favorites is the one that precedes Papi Gudia, the 1996 remake of the Hollywood film Child's Play, which states that the movie's intention is to warn children "against blind faith or surrender to alien things be it a doll or computer toys, robots, etc." In the case of Tahalka, the precredits disclaimer reads: "The Story of this feature film 'Tahalka' is imaginary and unfolds in the imaginary environment of imaginary countries. It has nothing to do with India or any other country or their inhabitants, governments, defense forces, or their existing facts and realities." Now, that all seems pretty comprehensive, but apparently out of a feeling that not quite a fine enough point has been put on things, the disclaimer continues: "It is reiterated that all the characters, incidents, places and environments are fictitious and have no relationship what so ever with any person living or dead. If any resemblance to any character or incident appears at any stage, it is just a coincidence."     This conspicuous abundance of caution might alert the canny reader to the possibility that Tahalka's chatty disclaimer might not be entirely on the level. I mean, to paraphrase Shakespeare, could Tahalka hath possibly protested any more? And are we seriously meant to accept that what is depicted in a film made in India by, presumably, inhabitants of India, only bears a resemblance to India and its inhabitants as the result of coincidence, if at all? One gets the sense that Tahalka has something to hide, and perhaps we might get a clue as to what that something might be once the movie proper has started. Tahalka proper starts with a panoramic view of the Himalayas, over which a narrator intones that these are the borders of "the nation that the world calls India". After this a map appears on the screen depicting India, Pakistan and China, with each country clearly labeled, over which the narrator states that beyond these borders lie those countries "whose greed penetrates into ours and crosses its limits", whose inhabitants "wish to color the ground of India red with the blood of Indians themselves and shatter India into a million pieces".     Incendiary talk, for sure. But don't get the wrong idea, because--even though it isn't shown on the map that's being displayed on screen--the country that the narrator is talking about isn't China or Pakistan, but rather the completely made up country of Dongrila. And as we are shown the sights of Dongrila--consisting mostly of crude models of vaguely orientalist structures situated on snowy model train-set peaks, interspersed with footage of a Buddhist monk strolling down a village street--the narrator tells us that Dongrila was once "made prosperous by India itself, nurtured and nourished". Now, however, this remote mountain paradise has fallen into the hands of a brutal dictator, the man known as General Dong. Now, it's not difficult to figure out where all of this is coming from. After all, the late eighties and early nineties were another period during which tensions between China and India were at close to a full boil--fueled in part by the Chinese government's perception of India as interfering in their affairs in Tibet--and the looming potential for renewed clashes along the countries' disputed border region, such as had been seen as recently as 1986, was a daily reality. However, that this is so obviously the scab that Tahalka is trying to pick--and with such rhetorical ferocity, to boot--makes it a little harder to understand the eleventh hour backpedalling that the opening disclaimer seems to be evidence of.     If it was, in fact, the film's director, Anil Sharma, who was reticent about casting stones at China directly, he'd gotten over such circumspection by the time of finally having his first box office success with 2001's Gadar: Ek Prem Katha. That film caused considerable public outcry with its perceived anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistani sentiments--sentiments that were delivered without resort to fanciful pseudonyms or references to imaginary lands. Whatever the case, though, if the makers of Tahalka were trying to exploit what they saw as some deep sense of national injury on the part of their potential audience, they failed miserably, because the inhabitants of India apparently stayed away from the film in droves. Anyway, once Tahalka has established itself as being annoyingly passive-aggressive, it proceeds with an opening sequence that is very similar to Mr. India's, featuring an anxious minion of General Dong's rushing to have an audience with the fearsome general himself. After that minion, Major D'Costa (Sunil Dhawan), is hurried--amid much Hitler saluting and shouting of "Long live Dong!"--through various checkpoints, and down a number of long, heavily guarded corridors, he is finally ushered into Dong's palatial inner sanctum, where. with the portentous striking of a gong, we finally get a look at our already much ballyhooed villain.     And what a villain is our General Dong. Establishing the Mogambo connection right off the bat, Puri is both bethroned and bedecked in a fanciful military uniform, and also comes with a numbingly repeated catchphrase: "Dong is never wrong". But in a departure from his obvious model, Dong also boasts a look in which no signifier of orientalist treachery is spared: the puttied eyelids, the Fu Manchu 'stache and goatee, the long braid, and, just in case you didn't get it, stretching across his bald pate, a tattoo of a Chinese dragon. Though Puri's booming basso profundo was one of his trademarks, when we finally hear him speak as Dong, he does so with a squeaky "ah so" Chinaman voice, peppering his utterances with fits of high pitched giggling. That is, except for those random scenes in which Puri just talks in the deep, threatening tones of Mogambo--indicating that, at some point during filming, a switch was decided upon. Oh, you sloppy, sloppy Tahalka! But we don't actually get to hear Dong speak at first, for it is at this point that the moment which makes Tahalka worth its price of admission occurs. Rather than greeting us, as he normally would, with a richly intoned declaration of villainous intent, Amrish Puri stands... and begins to sing. (And check the playback singers credits; that really is him singing.) And then he dances--not just a half-hearted little jig or two-step, mind you, but honest to God, hip-thrusting, fist-pumping getting down, with an array of swirling, scantily clad back-up dancers to goad him on. To top it all off, Amrish grabs a sitar mid-number and rocks it like Eddie Van Halen.     Of course, the "song" that Dong/Amrish sings can only be called such by the loosest standards, because the lyrics consist only of the word "shom" repeated over and over again. This, completing the odiousness of the portrait that's being painted, is apparently meant as a mockery of the Buddhist chant "om"--assuring us once and for all that Tahalka's makers will stop at nothing, and in turn causing us to anticipate with resignation the moment when Dong will pee in someone's Coke. With the "Shom Shom" song out of the way, Dong gets down to villainy. The unfortunate General D'Costa, we learn, has just returned from leading a failed incursion which resulted in two thousand of Dong's troops dying at the hands of India's defense forces. As punishment, Dong orders D'Costa to perform ritual suicide in the city square in front of all of Dongrila's citizens. But first we get a tour of Dong's suicide bomber farm; this consists of a dank dungeon in which captive young girls, hypnotized into submission by Dong, spend their waking hours walking in dazed circles while chained to a big rock, waiting for the day when they will be called upon to don a bomb belt and die for the greater glory of Dong. Then, with D'Costa dispatched, Dong sets about planning his revenge against India. Not one to delegate a matter of such importance, Dong accomplishes this task personally with the aid of several "duplicate Dongs", who distract security while the real Dong hijacks a tank at an Indian military parade and blows up the general responsible for the Indian counter-attack.     With this, India's defense forces decide that they have had it up to here with General Dong, and it is decided that a commando unit will be sent into Dongrila to eliminate him in a top secret, surgical strike. The bearded and intense Major Rao (Mukesh Khanna) is eager to lead this operation, because he has a quite understandable beef with Dong. A year earlier, while on a fishing trip with his young daughter, he stumbled upon an island that Dong operated as a sort of processing center for the kidnapped Indian schoolgirls destined to become his suicide bombers and sex slaves. Rao managed to aid some of those girls in escaping, but in the process Dong took his daughter captive. To taunt Rao, Dong gave him a year to come back for his daughter, after which he would, um, turn her out--then cut off Rao's leg with a sword and cast him off to sea. Rao is now so eager to go after Dong that he already has a whole plan drawn up, and a hand-picked crew of elite commandos to go with him. But forget elite, what we want to know about those commandos is: are they wacky? And the answer, sickeningly, is yes, with a capital wack. At this point we are introduced to Rao's three male commandos (Aditya Pancholi, Naseeruddin Shah, and Javed Jaffrey) in a series of scenes in which they try to hit on girls by indulging in some of the most spine-chilling instances of male cross-dressing ever committed to film, and then by pretending to be blind. Their dickishness firmly established, we follow the gang as they are introduced to the team's fifth member, Capt. Anju Sinha (Ekta Kapoor). And she's a guh.. a guh.. a girl! Still, the team is not yet complete, for a sixth is needed, despite the fact that everyone keeps referring to the group as "Force Five" (not to be confused with the Americanized Go Nagai cartoon series of the same name--which doesn't really need to be pointed out except to underscore what a complete nerd I am).     Because the territory surrounding Dongrila is dangerous and valley-ridden--and in fact includes a region called "Danger Valley" (which I'm pretty sure is made up)--a veteran with combat experience in the region is needed. Such a man is disgraced former army Major Dharam Singh, who is played by, as I alluded to earlier, a very old and tired-looking Dharmendra. Of course, Dharam Singh was only court marshaled because he was a patriotic super soldier who disobeyed orders in order to save thousands of Indian lives, and he's understandably bitter about it. Getting him to sign on for this mission will take much convincing and passionate appeals to his patriotism, and so the team heads off to Bangkok, where Dharam Singh is living easy--though not so easy that he can't take part in an elaborate night club number where he sings about "Rocking Around the Clock" while shimmying laboriously with a bunch of Thai chorus girls. I won't tell you what happens next, because I don't want to spoil it, but suffice it to say that Dharam Singh eventually agrees to join the mission... Oh, there, I just spoiled it. Anyway, soon the team of six are trekking out across the icy, mountainous landscape, encountering many dangers along the way, including an underground cavern filled with crabs and snakes. (There's a lot that I don't know about zoology, and I'll have to add the Himalayan Cave-Dwelling Snow Crab to that list.) Finally they manage to cross into Dongrila, though not without having to survive many skirmishes with Dong's forces (which include Bob Christo! Yay!). After defending themselves by throwing wasp's nests at the enemy and tricking them into drinking their piss, Force Five finally makes it's way to a safe house operated by a small band of resistance fighters lead by Prince Kao (Prem Chopra, wearing a hat that has little corks dangling from its brim).     Though Major Rau is the leader of the commandos, he also proves to be their greatest liability, thanks to the fact that his prosthetic leg just doesn't want to stay attached to his body. This leads to a scene in which Rau must flee from General Dong's advancing ski troops by skiing on one leg, using his pole with one hand and carrying his prosthetic leg--with the ski still attached to it--in the other. Eventually Rau's stump becomes gangrenous, which means that Force Five must sneak their way into Dongrila's only hospital, located deep within the heavily guarded central city. This may represent the only instance in the history of Bollywood that such an incursion is not accomplished by means of the commandos disguising themselves as a dance troupe. Rather, the soldiers commandeer a truck and costumes belonging to a troupe of Laurel & Hardy impersonators. Now, I have not seen Where Eagles Dare, but I realize that it is a film to which Tahalka owes a considerable debt. Still I'm guessing that there isn't a scene in Where Eagle's Dare in which Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood dress up like Laurel & Hardy and sing a song based on "Old MacDonald". I'm just guessing, of course. Many of Tahalka's exteriors and larger scale action sequences are accomplished by means of some particularly dodgy model work, which means that portions of Tahalka look like an especially half-assed episode of Thunderbirds. In fact, there is a model of a cable car line spanning a mountainous valley that looks suspiciously like the one used in Commando; so if you've seen Commando, you know what I'm talking about. Unfortunately, Tahalka misses the opportunity to have someone have a fight with Amrish Puri while dangling from that cable car, which means that Tahalka loses out to Commando on the awesomeness scale by a wide mark.     One convention of 1980s Hollywood action movies that Bollywood embraced wholeheartedly--and it's one that I think is as much inherited from slasher movies as it is an aspect of action movies' function as an exorcist of national demons--is the idea that vengeance cannot be achieved unless we see the villain completely physically obliterated. It's never enough just to shoot the guy; we also have to see him fall off the top of a skyscraper on fire with a hand grenade in his mouth before we can truly feel that justice has been served. Following this tradition, once our heroes have caught up with Dong, Tahalka serves up a long climactic scene in which all of the remaining cast members take turns kicking him repeatedly in the chest--to the accompaniment of that car door slamming noise that always accompanies people kicking somebody in the chest in Bollywood movies--before Dharmendra lifts Dong's broken body above his head and hurls it into a raging fire. These scenes of brutality in Bollywood movies of this vintage always get to me for some reason--partially because they stand out so much from the affable frivolity of much of what surrounds them, but also because, for all their righteous patriotic rage, they present an image of an India that has a gigantic chip on it's shoulder. I have to believe that this is an inaccurate representation, because, otherwise, everyone in the country would be too busy shouting defiant proclamations and firing rocket launchers across their borders for that whole economic miracle thing to have happened in the first place. In the case of Tahalka, what also strikes me is that--just as with the very similar climax of Mr. India--the somewhat elderly Amrish Puri doesn't seem to be using a stunt double while most of this kicking, beating and tossing is taking place. The man is a consummate professional.     And given that he is such a professional, I can't help being a little miffed on Puri's behalf at Tahalka's makers. It's much like the feeling I get watching Lee Van Cleef in the awful Captain Apache; The filmmakers in that case knew that they were working with an actor who would, out of a disciplined professional ethic, do whatever was asked of him, even if that involved croaking out an awful, psychedelic-tinged theme tune and letting people call him "red ass" all the time. That those filmmakers then went ahead and asked Van Cleef to do just that seems like something on the level of abuse, and the same goes for Anil Sharma and company in Puri's case. Puri once said that the reason he didn't pursue further roles in Hollywood films after his turn as Mola Ram was that he didn't like the way that Indians were portrayed in those films. Given that--in addition to reports that Puri, despite his screen persona, was a kindly and gentle man--I'd like to believe that the portrayal of General Dong was not something that he could entirely get behind, and that he undertook it only out of a humble dedication to the practice of his chosen craft. So, in the final tally, singing and dancing Amrish or no, it's difficult to get past the fact that Tahalka is a furiously awful film. Of course, that's mitigated somewhat by all the hate-mongering-- Oh, wait, that doesn't really mitigate things at all, does it? Nope. Tahalka just sucks from top to bottom. Still, it's nice how a derivative film can make you appreciate anew that from which it steals, and Tahalka definitely spurred me to new levels of admiration for the sure-handed direction and comparably high production values of Mr. India, even though Mr. India is one of the goofiest, cheesiest things I've ever seen.     This is not to say that I don't recommend Tahalka, of course. It certainly contains enough retarded insanity and cheapjack spectacle to keep you moderately engaged for the majority of its three hours, even if it does leave you feeling a little soiled. For that reason I'd suggest that, if you do decide to invest your time in it, you do so as a tribute to the late, great Mr. Puri, because that's an act which would almost make Tahalka seem worthwhile. Labels: Action, Bollywood, Stars: Amrish Puri, Stars: Dharmendra, Year: 1992 posted by Todd at 7:28 PM | 0 Comments Wednesday, March 05, 2008Dharam-Veer Release Year: 1977Country: India Starring: Dharmendra, Zeenat Aman, Jeetendra, Neetu Singh, Pran, Sheroo the Wonder Bird, Jeevan, Indrani Mukherjee, Dev Kumar, Azad, Ranjeet Writers: J.M. Desai, Kader Khan, K.B. Pathak, Prayag Raj, Pushpa Sharma Director: Manmohan Desai Cinematographer: N.V. Srinivas Music: Laxmikant Shantaram Kudalkar, Pyarelal Ramprasad Sharma (Laxmikant-Pyarelal) Producer: Chandan Desai, Subhash Desai, Chandrika G. Shah Once you're done with the knowledge-based cherry picking, there are a wide variety of factors that come into play in deciding which are the potential gems among the selection of five dollar Bollywood dvds at your local Indian grocer or favorite online vendor. Familiar names or faces in the cast or crew of a film are always helpful, but there are also certain thematic or conceptual lures that might serve to tip the scales. In the case of Dharam-Veer, for instance, it certainly didn't hurt that the cast included the stunning Zeenat Aman--and while its male lead, Dharmendra, isn't one of my favorite actors, I do harbor a lot of good will toward him thanks to his co-starring role--with Amitabh Bachchan--in the classic Sholay, as well as his appearance in other highly enjoyable films such as Ankhen and Alibaba aur 40 Chor. But what really closed the deal for me with Dharam-Veer was the fact that its action was described as taking place in a vaguely mediaeval "mythical kingdom". This aroused in me fevered hopes that Dharam-Veer would be some kind of mind-boggling ahistorical period piece--something, in other words, along the lines of Mard, the 1985 classic whose depiction of hero Amitabh Bachchan's battle against the British Raj managed to include MTV-inspired eighties fashions, gladiator battles, and women in frilly Victorian garb strapped to the front of Sherman tanks. These hopes of mine would have been even more fevered had I realized at the time that Dharam-Veer's director, Manmohan Desai, was also Mard's director. And, though my expectations would have no doubt bloated accordingly, I probably still would have come away from Dharam-Veer satisfied. The mythical land of the film's setting is indeed a gumbo of anachronisms--a greedy mash-up of mediaeval Europe, ancient Rome, and the 1001 Arabian nights that also manages to contain, along with its jousting matches and Roman chariots, gypsies, pirates and a climactic battle at sea involving canons--which I'm fairly sure had yet to be invented in the respective eras of King Arthur, Caesar and Scheherazade. This freedom from the constraints of history not only emboldens Dharam-Veer's art direction, but also allows its costumers to follow their muse wherever it may take them, a creative liberation that results in such singular sights as Zeenat Aman's Mediaeval gauchos and black nylons, black leather assemblages that put the "glad" in gladiator, and Jeetendra in some almost indescribably flamboyant flamenco dancer outfits (and, in those instances where the reach of the clothiers' imaginations exceeds that of their budget, baggy white long johns to fill the gaps).     I want to describe Dharam-Veer as a visual feast, but it's actually something less nutritionally balanced than a feast--more like a visual raid on the candy jar, given the candy jar is mostly full of Neco Wafers, Jolly Ranchers and Zots. The costumers render their otherworldly creations in a splashy comic book palette that, combined with the preponderance of brightly painted cardboard in the sets and backdrops, makes Dharam-Veer look like Prince Valiant by way of Flash Gordon by way of the Classics Illustrated version of Ben Hur. And, fittingly, all of this riotous display is in service of the type of over-heated, coincidence-dependent, improbably convoluted and cheerfully chaotic plot that seems to have been the exclusive territory of 1970s masala films. Whatever food metaphor you choose for the experience, you're bound to come away from it engorged - and, if you bring the right attitude to it, you'll be giddily satisfied as well. Dharam-Veer was one of four successful films directed by Manmohan Desai that were released during 1977, all of which dealt with the enduring Bollywood "lost and found"--or "separated at birth"--theme. The most successful of these was the blockbuster Amar Akbar Anthony, which starred Amitabh Bachchan, Vinod Khanna and Rishi Kapoor as brothers who grow up separately, unaware of one another's' existence--one raised as Hindu, another Muslim, and another Christian--ultimately to be united in vengeance against the man responsible for shattering their family. Following this model, Dharam-Veer opens with a complex shuffling of the familial deck. Interestingly, however, thanks to a chain of coincidences, all of these elements manage to fall back into their proper place over the course of the film, and the final dramatic revelation simply reveals that everything is pretty much as it should be, despite it not seeming that way.     As the film opens, a line of young noblemen are presenting the King with marriage offers--as in of jewels and other forms of valuable exchange--for his daughter, the Princess Meenakshi (Indrani Mukherjee) . The Princess, however, is unable to witness this touching spectacle, because she--headstrong, independent girl that she is--is off in the wilds hunting tigers. Unfortunately for Meenakshi, a gang of thugs hired by her brother, Satval Singh (Jeevan), is also on the hunt... for Meenakshi. Satval Singh has been told by a seer that he will die at the hands of his firstborn nephew, and so has decided to cut off the whole nephew-birthing business at its source by having the Princess killed. Fortunately, Jwala Singh (the mighty Pran), a proud hunter who, we later learn, is "well versed in the ways of the Samurai" and who has at his side a super intelligent falcon, Sheroo (played, according to the credits, by Sheroo The Wonder Bird), happens upon the scene and rescues Meenakshi from her attackers. The grateful Meenakshi promises Jwala Singh anything he wants as a reward for saving her life, and Jwala Singh asks that she become his wife. Immediately. Proving that she is truly a woman of her word, she agrees, and the two are married in a ceremony that Jwala Singh performs himself. Sadly, Jwala Singh and Meenakshi's first night of marital bliss is interrupted when one of the tigers Meenakshi had been hunting shows up at their door looking for some payback. Jwala Singh takes off in pursuit of the animal and on his way comes across a local whom the tiger has fatally mauled. Covering the corpse with his own cloak, he continues on and is soon locked in a death struggle with the enraged beastie. Meenakshi, meanwhile, wanders out after Jwala Singh and, seeing the dead body wrapped in his cloak, doesn't bother to go in for a closer look before jumping to conclusions and plunging into a deep state of shock. Meenakshi is eventually discovered and returned to the castle, where she remains in a wordless trance. Even so, the King still needs to get her married off. So when a nobleman with suitably diminished expectations comes courting, the deed is hastily done. This leads to the film's best line of dialogue, when Meenakshi finally awakens from her stupor in the presence of her new husband and he, in explaining the situation she finds herself in, says "You were not conscious when we got married".     Fortunately, Meenakshi's new husband, despite being willing to marry an unconscious woman, is a true gentleman. So when she informs him that not only is she married to the hunter Jwala Singh (whom she now believes to be dead), but also now with child as a result, he stops short of making the demands of marriage upon her. Rather, he agrees that the two of them should live separately under his roof, raising the child as man and wife, while not taking part in any of the carnal activities that such a union might imply. Though in return he asks that she promise to never reveal the true nature of the child's parentage (and we've seen how Meenakshi is about keeping promises). After the required interval, Princess Meenakshi gives birth to twin boys, a circumstance which is of no small concern to the craven Satval Singh, who is still determined to avoid the destiny the seer has laid out for him. Luckily for Satval Singh, his wife has also given birth--at exactly the same time as Meenakshi. Seeing an opportunity to serve two ends at once, Satval Singh switches the second born of the Princess's twins, Veer, with his own child, then takes the first born twin, Dharam, and drops him off a parapet. As the gods would have it, Sheroo The Wonder Bird is flying by at precisely that moment and, unwilling to tolerate infanticide on his watch, scoops Dharam up in his beak and flies off into the sunset. (It must be said here that most of Sheroo's wonders are performed by either a puppet or by Sheroo with a clearly visible tether tied around his midsection.) Meanwhile, Satval Singh's wife has had a crisis of conscience and has, unknown to him, switched her child back with Veer.     Sheroo The Wonder Bird deposits baby Dharam with the kindly blacksmith Lohar and his wife Dhano. As fate according to Dharam-Veer would have it, Lohar and Dhano just happen to be nursing back to health the wounded Hunter Jwala Singh, who has been in a coma for the entire nine months since getting on the wrong end of that tiger, and who awakens from that coma at the precise moment that Sheroo makes his baby delivery. Of course, Jwala Singh has no way of knowing that the baby is his--or even that he has fathered a baby--so all he can say is, basically, "Nice baby you've got there". Twenty or so years go by, during which both the King and Meenakshi's husband somehow manage to die, leaving her Queen of the realm. Because Satval Singh has believed all along that his son, Ranjeet (Ranjeet), is actually the child of Meenakshi, he has beaten and verbally abused him constantly, and so the boy has grown up to become a resentful lout much like his father. Veer (Jeetendra), on the other hand, has grown up to become a somewhat exuberant young man with a taste for big puffy sleeves with frills--and Dharam has grown up to become forty-two year old Dharmendra. Lohar has raised Dharam to be strong like the bull, and in an earlier scene we see him showing a younger version of Dharam how to split wood with one swing--that younger version of Dharam played by Dharmendra's actual son, billed here as "Bobby Junior Dharmendra", but better know today as the Bollywood star Bobby Deol. (For those who don't know, Dharmendra is also the father of the actor Sunny Deol.)     The class boundaries in Queen Meenakshi's kingdom are obviously considerably more porous than those of mediaeval England or ancient Rome (or even modern India, for that matter), because Prince Veer and Dharam, the poor blacksmith's son, have somehow, over these twenty-some years, become inseparable friends. As such, they spend their (by all appearances considerable) leisure time dancing across the kingdom's lush hillsides, proclaiming and demonstrating their love for one another with a homoerotic intensity that almost threatens to eclipse that of even Feroz Khan and Vinod Khanna in Qurbani. Somewhere in the course of their frolicking, they encounter Pallavi, a mean princess played by Zeenat Aman--an occasion which the two men commemorate by singing a charming song about how one must keep one's woman on a short leash in order to prevent her from developing a haughty attitude like Pallavi's. Dharam declares that Pallavi, despite all appearances to the contrary, will ultimately be his, and so begins a strange courtship in which Pallavi shows her affection for Dharam by forcing him to perform in life and death struggles in her personal coliseum, locking him in cages where he is poked with spears by midgets, and having him bound and whipped. Finally Dharam convinces Pallavi to come away with him, and what follows is a jaw dropping musical number in which a singing Dharmendra leads a bound Zeenat Aman around on a rope while forcing her to do menial tasks. It appears that Pallavi is beginning to enjoy this treatment, but then she takes the first opportunity to stab Dharam in the gut, leaving him to bleed to death as she hightails it back to her castle. AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT, who should come upon Dharam's wasting body but the hunter Jwala Singh himself. Jwala Singh nurses Dharam back to health, and Dharam, impressed by the remarkably out-of-shape looking Jwala Singh's mastery of the Ways of the Samurai, asks to become his pupil. Pallavi, meanwhile, has had an attack of conscience over her gutting Dharam like a stuck pig and returns contritely to his side. Ultimately, she realizes her love for Dharam and, in so doing, becomes virtuous and kind. This is an unhappy development for Sujan, the man to whom Pallavi has been promised in marriage, as well as for Pallavi's brother, Dev Singh (Dev Kumar), and the two quickly become part of the growing list of Dharam and Veer's mortal enemies, which also includes Satval Singh, Ranjeet and, for reasons I won't even go into, Azad, the leader of a band of gypsies. Ultimately this axis of evil will conspire to turn the two BFF's against one another, a plot which will lead to Lohar, Dharam's adoptive father, being framed and punished in the Queen's court for a crime that he didn't commit, and ultimately to the murder of Dharam's adoptive mother in circumstances that place suspicion upon the royal family. Despite the Queen's assurance that the family is innocent of these crimes, Dharam asks that in recompense she leave her castle and come to his hovel to take the place of his mom. As demonstrated before, Meenakshi is honorable to a fault, and so acquiesces to this demand, spending her days from that point on cleaning up around Dharam's hut, feeding him food with her hands and giving him foot rubs.     And so, as mentioned earlier, those familial bonds that fate conspired to break at Dharam-Veer's outset manage to, despite all obstacles, reassert themselves by its final act. It is the purpose of the "lost and found" films to serve as a testament to the strength of these bonds, and dramatize how, as an expression of God's will, they exert a magnetic pull that no barrier of class, character or simple geography can resist. In the case of Dharam-Veer, this means that everyone ends up having the relationship with one another that they're more or less supposed to be having (though admittedly with some markedly creepy overtones), even though they don't know it--until, of course, events lead to a round of startling revelations... and battles at sea involving pirates and lots of swinging back and forth from the masts of long ships. Now, I have spent a lot more time than I normally would summarizing the story of Dharam-Veer (even though, believe it or not, I haven't come close to giving everything away). The reason for this is that the insane convolutions of Dharam-Veer's plot are such a large part of its appeal. As with many of the best masala films, in between marveling at its many visual delights, one can't help sticking with it just to see what preposterous turn of events it will throw at you next. And just when you think you've got a handle on what type of cards the film has up its sleeve, it comes at you from a whole different angle, blindsiding you anew by way of some extremely bizarre primitive special effects or absurd action choreography.     Those above mentioned special effects largely consist of shots--shots that are none too seamlessly integrated into the sequences in which they feature, I must add--in which horses are made to perform leaps that said horses either wouldn't or couldn't do by means of what appears to be animation using cut out photographs against a still background. The result is actually quite arresting visually, in a surreal sort of way, if you disregard that you were actually intended to accept it as reality. As for the fight staging, the defining philosophy appears to have been "You can never have too many back flips". People perform this move in response to even the slightest bit of physical force--and in defiance of all known laws of physics--and also incorporate it into their attacks, forcing their opponents to wait until they have spiked their landing before running them through. Given its vintage, the one thing that really would have put Dharam-Veer over the top for me is a seriously funky score. However, the score by the team of Lamikant-Pyarelal is actually quite conservative, depending a lot on relatively traditional Indian rhythms and instrumentation. This is still not a bad thing, and the songs are pleasant overall, if not exceptionally memorable, and always manage, at their most lively, to get the head doing that little sideways bob that any good Bollywood soundtrack should. Of course, it's often hard with these movies to separate the songs from the production numbers--or "picturizations"--that contain them, and many of those here are top notch. The sequence for "Hum Banjaron Ki Baat Mat", in which a literal army of floridly garbed singing and dancing gypsies overwhelms Princess Pallavi's amphitheater of pain, is without question the moment when the picture is at its most excruciatingly colorful. But it is another gypsy themed number, the climactic campfire rave-up "Band Ho Mutthi To Laakh Ki Khul Gayi To Phir Khaak Ki", that was the clear standout for me--though it was less characteristic of Dharam-Veer in that it is merely dazzling, rather than overwhelming, in its use of color.     On the acting front, Dharam-Veer's cast does a good job within the constraints of the comic book world that the film creates. Dharmendra is a performer who's very good at standing on top of things, puffing out his chest and booming out defiant proclamations - often while pointing - to the corrupt powers that be, and he gets to do a lot of that here. Zeenat Aman, who has shown elsewhere that she is an actress of considerable range, spends the first half of the film pouting and scowling, and the second half winsome and starry eyed. Jeetendra, by far the most abused of the celebrity clothes-horses on display, does perhaps the most admirable job by managing not to be completely eclipsed by his wardrobe. Lastly, Jeevan, thanks to a spirited commitment to shaking his fists and hissing the heroes' names through clenched teeth, makes for a fine two dimensional villain, though he's no Amrish Puri. Dharam-Veer is a movie designed to thrill, and it succeeds on all of the intended levels, as well as on many levels that probably weren't so intentional. In addition to the thrill of watching its spectacular musical numbers and beautiful stars, there is the singular thrill that comes from seeing combinations of color and fabric that will likely never be repeated in human history. Adding to Dharam-Veer's singularity is the fact that it's pretty much guaranteed to be the only place where you can see a special effects shot of a horse jumping over a castle wall that is at once so patently phony and so hauntingly compelling. Even if you could find any of these elements in another film, the chances of that film also starring Sheroo The Wonder Bird are slim to none. Perhaps, then, Dharam-Veer can be said to be a film that exists against the odds--and perhaps even in defiance of reality itself. And given that it comes to you, in spite of all probability, with all these many gifts in store, how can you refuse it? Especially when it's only five bucks. Labels: Bollywood, Fantasy: Sword and Sorcery, Stars: Dharmendra, Stars: Zeenat Aman, Year: 1977 posted by Todd at 9:38 AM | 3 Comments Friday, February 29, 2008Don Release Year: 2006Country: India Starring: Shahrukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Arjun Rampal, Isha Koppikar, Boman Irani, Om Puri, Pavan Malhotra, Rajesh Khattar, Tanay Chheda, Kareena Kapoor, Chunky Pandey, Sushma Reddy, Diwakar Pundir, Sandrine Verrier, Sidhart Jyoti. Writer: Farhan Akhtar Director: Farhan Akhtar Cinematographer: Mohanan Music: Shankar Mahadevan, Loy Mendonsa, Ehsaan Noorani Producer: Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani Availability: Buy it from India Weekly. Back in 1998 or so, the Amitabh Bachchan blockbuster Don became the first Bollywood film I ever watched. Or rather, that I ever really watched. Before that, I watched a Ramsay Brothers horror film called Haveli, but it was an nth generation dupe with no subtitles, frequent commercial breaks, and scrolling banner ads on the top and bottom of the picture -- and occasionally through the middle of the screen as well. So I don't think that actually counts. But at some point in 1998, I purchased a DVD copy of Don, knowing very little about the film other than the fact that the theme song, which I'd heard on the "Bombay the Hard Way" compilation, was pretty bad-ass. To say that my mind was blown after viewing it would be something of an understatement. Although technically crude in spots, there was no denying the film's immense charm and unadulterated joy de vivre. Bollywood cinema is certainly as commercial and financially driven as Hollywood, but the desire to make sure the audience has one hell of a good time is so infused into every frame that one can't help but fall in love with an industry product which, while probably no less focus grouped and cynical behind the scenes, is just so full of good natured energy and spirit -- not to mention so full of scenes of a jeury-curl sporting Pran doing backflips, kungfu kicks, and various feats of tightrope walking prowess. With Don as the impetus, I began my fruitful and only very rarely disappointing relationship with Indian cinema. Movies came and went, and I learned more and more about the action stars, past and present, that Bollywood had to offer -- Dharmendra and his son Sonny Deol, the mighty Mithun, and the suave old school guys like Dev Anand and Shammi Kapoor when he was all thin and hot and sporting his pencil thin mustache -- but as much as I liked all these guys, and as much as I liked many of their films, Don and Amitabh remained at the top of the heap. Don was my first Bollywood crush, so to speak, and you always have a soft spot for your first.
Not that celebrating Amitabh Bachchan is anything unusual. He was, after all, the single biggest star in Bollywood for decades, revolutionizing the type of cinema the industry produced and bringing the harder edged, grittier style of 70s era American filmmaking and anti-heroes to India. And he could dance. His now-famous and much referred to "angry young man" -- a character archetype he pioneered in films like Deewar and Zanjeer and continued to inhabit well into the 80s, and a little bit after that, when he was too old to be an "angry young man" -- took the streetwise edge of an anti-authoritarian Sam Peckinpah hero and mixed it with the smooth dance moves of John Travolta. The character tapped into something previously only flirted with by stars like Shammi Kapoor, and Indian audiences flocked to Amitabh and his films, elevating him far beyond the mantle of mere "movie star" into something wholly greater and largely unique to India. Of course, nothing gold can stay, and Amitabh wasn't going to be able to play the angry young man forever, though he was game to try for as long as he could. A series of personal and professional setbacks, including a disastrous run in politics and a financially ruinous gamble on a production and broadcast studio -- tarnished Amitabh's record somewhat, causing him to slum it in some crap films for a while in order to rebuild his empire. But rebuild he did, and while he's not above taking the occasional crap role for a boatload of cash (the man was in Boom, for crying out loud), he has settled comfortably into the role of dashing elder statesman and head of a dynasty that includes his fabulously popular son Abhishek and Abhishek's famously gorgeous superstar wife, Aishwarya Rai. But there was another.
In the 1990s, when Amitabh's star was in decline and Sonny Deol was busy single-handedly defeating the entire Pakistani nation, action films gave way to romantic comedies and dramas as the preferred style of movie. Even Sonny had to take time out from punching out terrorists in order to make a few romantic movies. But the man who emerged during the latter half of that decade as the undisputed king of Bollywood was a guy named Shahrukh Khan. Khan has the same dark, smoldering style of good looks that allowed Amitabh to make women swoon, but he also had an impish charm that Amitabh was occasionally capable of but hardly defined by. Khan had the smirk and the cocked eyebrow that could magically make a woman slink out of her clothes or spontaneously dance in the rain, depending on Shahrukh's whim at that particular moment. And like Amitabh, Shahrukh wasn't afraid to take on risky or controversial roles, perhaps best exemplified by his turn as an obsessed journalist in 1998's terrorist drama Dil Se. Although Amitabh had ushered in an era in which it was possible for the hero to die at the end (rare in Bollywood cinema, which treasured the happy ending), that had gone out of style by the 90s. But Shahrukh wasn't afraid to try and bring it back, along with films that delivered spectacle and entertainment with a heavy dose of politics and social rumination.
I admit that I was late to the Shahrukh game. Romantic comedies have never been my thing, so for years I explored Bollywood film without ever coming into contact with Shahrukh or even being aware of how famous he was. Several years ago, I finally watched Dil Se, and while it is a problematic film in some respects, I was never the less blown away by the film itself -- but not by Shahrukh, who turns in a credible if somewhat unsympathetic performance for most of the film before going all Jackie Cheung over the top at the end in a bit that was supposed to be highly emotional and tense but never quite succeeded for me. I had a few other Shahrukh films in my collection, though -- an ancient world epic called Asoka and a film called Karan Arjun, which I bought for no other reason than I read a review that said nothing more than, "Horrifically violent." I ended up going with Asoka, because I sure do love sweeping costumed epics -- that's my style of romance film -- and it had been directed by the cinematographer Santosh Sivan, who had turned Dil Se into one of the most sumptuously shot films I'd ever seen. As I wrote in the review, it was during Asoka that I "got" Shahrukh. I still don't keep up with current Bollywood news very astutely. I tend to watch older movies, anyway, and new movies that I might be interested in I learn about through reviews (usually bad). However, I did pick up that Shahrukh Khan -- reigning king of Bollywood -- had a bit of a tiff with Amitabh, who wasn't entirely ready to turn over the throne. I'm sure both guys get tired of one being compared to the other, and I understand Amitabh feeling threatened by the young lion, just as Shahrukh is probably desperate to emerge from the long shadow Amitabh casts. At first, it would seem that remaking one of Amitabh's most famous films wouldn't really be a step in the right direction.
When I found out Shahrukh was remaking Don, I was ambivalent but not offended the way some people were (and always are by remakes of famous films). And it seemed like a canny move by Shahrukh to star as the titular king of the underworld and his good-natured doppelganger. Because this Don would be different but the same -- or is it the same but different? Anyway, it would pay homage to Amitabh but also highlight the ways in which Shahrukh -- and modern Indian cinema -- was different from Amitabh and his classic film. It may seem a convoluted conclusion for me to draw, but this is Bollywood, and Bollywood plots are nothing if not convoluted. Shahrukh Khan plays very close to the plot of the first film for abut half its running time. Khan stars as Don, relocated for this version of the story from Bombay to Kuala Lampur. Don is a major player in the India- Kuala Lampur criminal underworld, but he's chafing under the command of men he sees as less intelligent, less capable, and less ambitious than himself. Unfortunately, his drive to excel brings him to the attention of Interpol, who want to take down Don as a way of toppling the entire criminal organization for which he works. Teaming up to bring down Shahrukh Don are Interpol inspector Vishal (played by venerable Indian film icon Om Puri (last seen in these parts coaching Mithun on to superstardom in Disco Dancer), and Indian DCP DeSilva (Boman Irani). But The Man isn't Don's only concern. After offing a lieutenant of his who was hoping to escape with his girlfriend (Kareena Kapoor, in a cameo and filling the role Helen tackled in the original) from Don, then offing the girl as well, her vengeful kungfu-powered sister, Roma (Priyanka Chopra, last mentioned on Teleport City in the review of Asambhav and here attempting to fill the role originated by Zeenat Aman), has decided to kill Don -- or die trying -- by infiltrating his gang.
Don's ambition eventually gets the better of him, as a drug deal gone bad gets busted up by the cops. Allow to pause here to ask, as I have perhaps asked before, how does any business ever get conducted in the criminal underworld if every single deal is a double cross of the, "No I don't think we'll pay you" variety? I mean, we see Shahrukh Don involved in two deals in this movie, and both of them are betrayals. And how many times have we seen similar betrayals in other action films? One dare not even think about it. So how can you get anything done if everyone is always taking the suitcase full of cash or drugs, but then pulling out a gun instead of turning over the other suitcase full of drugs or cash? Just once, a movie should feature two gangs standing face to face. The leader of the one gang slides over a suitcase full of coke. The other side inspects it, then slides over a suitcase full of cash. After that is inspected, both of them say their goodbyes and go their separate ways, looking forward to doing business with each other again. Anyway, Don's drug deal gone wrong, which includes the famous exploding briefcase from the beginning of the original Don, leads to a chase with the cops, which in turn leads to Don being mortally wounded. However, the only person who is aware of Don's situation is the DCP, and he just happens to have once met a street performer with a heart of gold and uncanny resemblance to the dying criminal mastermind...
And it is here that the remake begins to toy with expectations and the plot of the original. The basics are the same. Don's happy-go-lucky look-alike, Vijay (also Khan), is enlisted by the DCP -- without anyone else's knowledge, lest there be a security leak -- to masquerade as Don and collect evidence against the upper echelon of the crime organization. Vijay reluctantly agrees, with DeSilva offering to make sure the orphan boy for which Vijay cares gets a proper education. Needless to say, things are complicated for Vijay. The police don't know he's not Don, so they are still trying to kill or capture him. Roma doesn't know he's not Don, so she's still plotting to assassinate him. And Don's own men waver between belief and suspicion. All these complications were present in the original film, but the remake throws a couple more on for good measure. At this point, I think I'm going to dispense with comparisons to the original, as they are largely pointless, in my opinion. So know that I loved the original. I also loved the remake, though it is a very different type of film, less gritty crime drama and more slick jet-setting adventure. Shahrukh Khan is better in the role of Vijay as Don than as Don himself, but he's excellent all the way around. He also proves that he is a proud member of that exclusive club of men who can successfully pull off outfits that would look utterly absurd on any other man. This club was practically founded by Fred Astaire, and it currently includes David Beckham, Brad Pitt, and of course, Shahrukh Khan. For much of the film, Don alternates between more modern dress -- slick slim-cut suits, hooded sweatshirts, and so on -- and an array of garish polyester (actually, probably silk) shirts from the "Amitabh '78" collection (buy it in the spring 1978 International Male catalog). But the crowning achievement is the innovation of the "inner tie," a brightly colored tie worn around one's bare neck rather than around the shirt collar, and then tucked into the shirt itself at the neck (or, if you have a chest like Shahrukh, a couple inches down from the neck, where you finally get around to fastening some buttons). I know, I know! It sounds absolutely ludicrous, and it is. Go on, try it. I did. See? You look like an idiot, don't you? But look at Shahrukh Don. That's right -- it looks awesome on him. How is this possible? We mere mortal men will probably never know.
Don's look is, of course, just one part of the overall art design of the film, meant to give everything an ultra high-tech, bad-ass, modern sheen. And it really works. This is one cool movie. Relocating the film from Bombay to Kuala Lampur allows Don to take full advantage of Kuala Lampur's glass high rises and excessive luxuries. And unlike many films that strive for a similar style, Don doesn't necessarily have to turn a blind eye to substance as a trade-off. Much of that substance comes from an unlikely place. When last we saw Arjun Rampal here, we were making fun of what a bad actor he was in Asambhav. When I learned that he was the one cast to reprise Pran's role as the unfortunate father of the child Vijay eventually discovers and adopts, I was ready to write that whole portion of the film off. Surprisingly, though, Arjun turns in one hell of a performance as a computer security expert (or so they claim -- anyone who is actually involved in any degree of computer security will be amused and appalled by what passes for computer security) who is forced to commit robbery and, as a result, get busted by the cops, crippled by a bullet in the leg, loses his wife when she is murdered as retribution for the botched robbery, and loses his son, who escapes murder but vanishes (to be adopted, of course, by Vijay). Rampal brings a fierce intensity to the role of which I didn't know he was capable. Sure, I miss his character being a jeury curled ugly guy with a talent for circus performing, but I can always get that from the old film. Priyanka Chopra, another Asambhav alumni, fares slightly less better trying to fill the shoes of Roma. She's perfectly acceptable but ultimately unmemorable when matched up against the always superb Shahrukh and the surprisingly intense Rampal. Her character just seems to lack vitality, an although I said I wasn't going to invoke the original, I have to say that a large part of the problem is that she's taking on a role that was revolutionary in the 70s and originally filled by a revolutionary actress in Zeenat Aman. Zeenat made me believe. Priyanka doesn't, though I will admit that she looks great, acts well, and has a few decent action scenes. I really like her and I think she makes a good action heroine, but as is often the case both in Bollywood and throughout the world, the script doesn't seem to have a clear idea of what to do with her. The biggest problem with her role here is that this is Shahrukh's movie, and trying to outshine Don Khan is strictly a mission asambhav. Balancing out the female end of things is Isha Koppikar as Don's main moll, Anita. She's absolutely perfect for the part, and unfortunately,t he movie has even less for her to do than it does Priyanka. A real shame, because she burns up the screen even with the little she's given to do.
I didn't know a whole lot about Boman Irani before this movie, and I guess I still don't know much about him other than he bears an uncanny and slightly disturbing resemblance to Richard Kind -- you know, if Richard Kind shot people. Anyway, the role of DeSilva gives him plenty to do, and he does plenty with it. The rest of the cast rounds things out nicely, with pretty much everyone turning in a solid performance. As with many modern films, Don packs a few too many herky jerky editing tricks and CGI-powered camera hijinks into its running time than a film probably should. It doesn't reach Asambhav levels of abuse, but you better be prepared for writer-director Farhan Akhtar to rely heavily on split screens, slow motion, CGI vehicle stunts and explosions, rapid fire jump cuts, and that thing where guys walk in slow motion to techno music, then the film suddenly speeds up for like two seconds, then it all goes into slow motion again. Despite those indulgences though, which it seems like we're just going to have to put up with since every goddamn country in the world seems to employ them now, Akhtar's direction is surprisingly sure-handed for so inexperienced a director. I don't know how a guy with so few credits to his name managed to land a directing gig of this magnitude, but he doesn't let the film down. Both his direction and his script are snappy and exciting. The cinematography by K.U. Mohanan is also top notch -- not Christopher Doyle or Santosh Sivan good, but very stylish, taking full advantage of Kuala Lampur's glittering towers, modernist interiors, and gorgeous beaches. Although also possessed of few major credits, he successfully gives this movie the super-hip, super-slick appearance it needs.
The music is neither here nor there and is comprised primarily of generic action film techno and electronic music. The musical numbers are largely forgettable, though Kareena Kapoor's recreation of the famous Helen scene from the original serves primarily to remind us why Helen was such a national treasure. I don't know exactly what goes wrong in that scene, because I love sexy women doing sexy dancing, but I spent most of that number entranced by Shahrukh's inner tie. I didn't have terribly high expectations going into this film, but I did have expectations. I am happy to say that Don far exceeded what I expected from it. I really liked this movie a lot. It's fast paced, super cool, emotionally engaging, and manages to work as a remake, homage, and re-imagining without ever losing the spirit of the original. I don't see any reason one couldn't easily be a fan of both the original and the remake. Given my druthers, I would have introduced Vijay earlier, rather than spring him all of sudden into the film with minimal explanation, but that's a small quibble at best. I don't know what the eventual outcome of the Amitabh-versus-Shahrukh rivalry will be, and I don't really care. I'd be happy to hang out with or accept sartorial advice from either man. Of course, this would probably result in me wearing an inner tie with a jacket covered in flashing disco lights, so perhaps I'm best off as I am, a peon basking in the majesty of the Don and the Khan. Labels: Action, Bollywood, Stars: Kareena Kapoor, Stars: Priyanka Chopra, Stars: Shahrukh Khan, Year: 2006 posted by Keith at 1:50 PM | 3 Comments Saturday, February 09, 2008Mr. India Release Year: 1987Country: India Starring: Anil Kapoor, Sridevi, Amrish Puri, Ashok Kumar, Satish Kaushik, Bob Christo, Sharat Saxena. Writer: Javed Akhtar and Salim Khan Director: Shekhar Kapur Cinematographer: Baba Azmi Music: Laxmikant-Pyarelal Producer: Boney Kapoor Availability: Buy it from India Weekly. There is a particular style of courtship presented in Bollywood movies that can be a bit of a tough go-around for Western viewers trying to dabble in that cinema. This courtship begins, predictably, with boy meeting girl. But while boy is immediately smitten by girl, girl loathes boy - because she is either A) a stuck-up rich girl who cannot see beyond boy's modest circumstances, or B) a virtuous village girl who cannot see past boy's frivolous and free-spending ways. In either case, boy does not give up, and instead strives to make himself a near constant presence in girl's life, popping up with a new, even more spirited attempt to ingratiate himself whenever she least expects it. Finally, by dint of boy's persistence and omnipresence, girl's resistance is worn down and she has no choice but to look past her prejudices and see the kind, tender and - above all - mother worshipping heart that beats within boy. Love blossoms. Now, many of us would call this particular type of courtship "stalking". And not only is it widely illegal, but it also proves to have markedly less real-world effectiveness in winning the affections of one's object of desire than these movies might have you think. At the same time, however, the process of winning hearts through attrition that it represents is also, in my experience, the way that Bollywood movies themselves work. For, unlike your typical Hollywood crowd-pleasers--which attempt to "suck you in" immediately by way of brute narrative drive--Bollywood films often seem to throw obstacle in your path, greeting you with a host of elements that are certain Kryptonite to self-considered persons of taste, and then go on, by way of sheer duration and an unflagging eagerness to please, to slowly and subtly chip away at the defenses, until to not fully embrace what's being presented seems like it could only be the result of some dire character flaw. Indeed, many of the Bollywood films that have ended up being my favorites found their initial volleys of goofy artifice and over-obvious appeals to sentiment bouncing right off of the hard, frozen shell of my cynical heart. But at some point--usually right near the end of their second hour--I found that that same resistant heart, without my knowing it, had gradually begun to beat along with the movie's persistent rhythm, and was now being played by it like a well-strung Stradivarius. It is this slow process of seduction, I believe, that makes watching Bollywood films so addictive, the reason that anyone who makes it past the initial hurdles presented by the experience will find themselves irretrievably hooked. Take, 1987's Mr. India, for instance. The film boasts alternately maudlin and jingoistic appeals to patriotism, a small army of aggressively cute children who are shamelessly exploited for cheap pathos whenever the script requires, broad physical comedy of the slide-whistle and bass drum variety, and a corny super hero plot that doesn't even get going until halfway through the film's three hour running time--all elements that would seem lab-tested to make Mr. India hard to love by anyone with a sensible thought in their head. Nonetheless, as much as I tried to distance myself by taking in Mr. India as an inept freak show loaded with overheated propaganda, there came that fateful moment during the second hour, right after one of those child-fueled moments of cheap pathos, when I felt a familiar lump growing in my throat. And with that lump came a strangled, tear-choked voice, urging the hero on to avenge the terrible wrong that had been done: "You get those bastards, Mr. India!" And that voice, as if I needed to tell you, was my own. Mr. India had totally made me its bitch. Mr. India begins with a visit to the vast secret island fortress of Mogambo, a super villain played by the fearsomely-browed Amrish Puri, a frequent Bollywood movie super villain who--as any American reviewer of his movies is required by law to state--is known in the West for his turn as the bad guy in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Mogambo, for seemingly no particular reason, really hates India, and he expresses that hatred by loading the country with illegal drugs, adulterating the grain supply with stones, and generally making life crappy for the average Indian. Judging from the somewhat paranoid tone of Mr. India's nationalistic drum-beating, I'm guessing that Mogambo represents pretty much every country that's not India--but especially that country that's not India whose name rhymes with "Snack-i-stan". At Mogambo's command is an army of foot soldiers so devoted that they will throw themselves into a pit of acid at his bidding just because he thinks it would be funny. He also has in his employ the one and only Doctor Fu Manchu, who is just as risible a stereotype when portrayed by Asians. Mogambo is clearly an object of worship to these various minions, and each greets his every move and utterance with a Hitler salute and a cry of "Hail Mogambo!" In reply--and with a frequency intended to insure you never forget that This Is The Catch Phrase--Mogambo invariably purrs, "Mogambo is pleased". It turns out that Mogambo needs a new base of operations on India's coast to facilitate his import of horror into the country, and it just so happens that the ideal spot is the home of Arun, played by Anil Kapoor (Taal, 1942: A Love Story). Arun is a gentle soul of modest means whose generous spirit makes him apparently unable to resist any orphan, which has lead to his home being filled with an assortment of cloyingly adorable urchins. Arun is also the son of a late scientist who, unknown to Arun, created an invisibility device that Mogambo has unsuccessfully been trying to get his hands on for years. Of course, this fact will not become relevant until much later in Mr. India, since the film's first half is largely taken up by a "save the orphanage" plot arising from Mogambo's repeated attempts--using Arun's unscrupulous landlord as a proxy--to oust Arun and the kids from their home. Amid this business we are introduced to Seema (Sridevi), a reporter whose resonant pluckiness and girly-ness reminds us that the Christopher Reeve/Margot Kidder Superman movies were still being made in 1987. Through a typically convoluted set of circumstances, Seema becomes a boarder in Arun's home--and, as such, comes to be something of an audience surrogate, as Arun and the children's monotonous toothsome-ness and good cheer will come to slowly wear her down from a state of unqualified revulsion to one of exhausted acceptance and ultimately, actual fondness (though the rest of us probably won't go quite that far). It is not until Mogambo's goons resort to actual strong-arm tactics against Arun and his toddler army that the hyperactive machinations of Mr. India's plot see fit to put in Arun's hands his father's invisibility bracelet. It is with this newfound power that Arun becomes Mr. India, a symbol (though, interestingly, an invisible one) of the Indian common man, bent on wiping out all those who would undermine his beloved mother country. In the course of what follows, some of the more memorable examples of Arun's pro-Indian payback include him forcing one of Mogambo's goons to eat a mouthful of the stones used to adulterate the country's grain, followed by him taking the goon's feast laden table from the posh restaurant in which he'd been seated and placing it down in front of a starving family huddled on the street outside. In another instance, Mr. India terrorizes one of Mogambo's associates, a decadent Englishman seeking to trade arms and drugs for Indian national treasures (Bob Christo, a familiar face in Bollywood thanks to his go-to-guy for evil whitey roles status), into kneeling in trembling worship before the Hindu god Hanuman. All of this makes Mr. India quite popular with the public, and it's not long before Mogambo is raising a gloved fist and uttering his name through tightly clenched teeth. Seema, on the other hand, is in love with Mr. India, and lets the world know by way of song (see the number "Karte Hain Hum Pyar Mr. India Se", aka "I'm In love With Mr. India").     Though its plot may sound predictable, Mr. India as a viewing experience is anything but. In fact, if you were looking for an example of classic masala film style, you couldn't do much better. So many disparate elements are thrown out in its eagerness to appeal that it's impossible to tell which way Mr. India will veer next. The experience might lead the uninitiated to wonder exactly who the film was intended for; and its a valid question. For instance, it seems to a large extent to be a children's film, except for when it really isn't. Mogambo, for one--thanks to his ridiculous name and exaggerated bluster, in combination with the cartoonish caricature of military pomp that surrounds him--at first almost comes across like some kind of Doctor Seuss character--something along the lines of The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T's cranky, monomaniacal Dr. Terwilliker. But then, in the film's final third, when Mogambo resorts to some all-too-real-world terrorist tactics--taking countless civilian lives by means of bombs concealed in public spaces--we are starkly reminded that the film has more on its agenda than poking gentle, whimsical fun at authoritarian delusions. Likewise, while Mr. India uses a bunch of cute kids as sentimental window dressing, it's more than eager to put those kids in harm's way when it serves to pump up the outraged sense of injury that energizes it's violent, pyrotechnically-enhanced conclusion. These radical shifts in tone apply just as much to Mr. India's musical numbers, which were composed by the prolific team of Laxmikant-Pyarelal. These, unfortunately, are mostly pretty dreadful, consisting for the most part of Arun's orphans singing about sunshine, rainbows and a brighter tomorrow. Family friendly stuff, to be sure. Less so, but still skirting the borderline, is a mid-film number in which Sridevi is accompanied by male dancers who, at first, sport multi-colored afros and metallic face paint and then, later--and inexplicably--black face. But the real standout is the later number "Kaate Nahin Katte Ye Din", which is steamy in the way that only Bollywood musical numbers featuring two people with all of their clothes on can be. Or, I should say, featuring one person, because Sridevi's partner in this number is the mostly invisible Arun--a situation that is enthusiastically mined for it's erotic possibilities (at one point, the effect of Mr. India's invisible embrace is achieved by Sridevi pressing her ample boobs up against a sheet of glass). As the pumping, tango-like beat of the song turns up the heat, we watch Sridevi chill and tremble to her lover's unseen caresses, punctuated by brief, spectral glimpses of Arun delivering them. It's a real show-stopper, one that ably delivers us into the "anything goes" tone of the film's final third--and it's so deftly handled that it suddenly awakens you to the possibility that Mr. India's construction might have involved more than a dartboard and scraps of cocktail napkin with plot points written on them.     Despite making Mr. India probably an unsuitable choice for a video babysitter, the movie's dramatic shifts have, for me, one inarguable upside. And that is that they once again accomplish that wonderful Bollywood magic trick by which a film that begins as the story of a humble man trying to save an orphanage can end as a giant, James Bond-style conflagration inside a crazy sci fi lair. For all the many Bollywood films I've seen, I can count on one hand the ones whose outset allowed me to accurately predict what type of film they would be at their conclusion. Broad comedy crumbles into tragedy, family melodrama escalates into high octane action spectacle, and, in the present case, an affably goofy super hero yarn suddenly becomes infused with a blood lusting thirst for national vengeance. It's often a head spinning ride--one that, in the best cases, leaves you with no memory of the longeurs and treacle you had to suffer through at the beginning. Which is exactly what makes you get back on again. Mr. India was only director Shekhar Kapur's second film and, surprisingly, he did not choose to parlay its considerable success into a career making cartoonish kiddie sci fi movies loaded with violence and suggestive dancing. Rather--in what I see as a clear failure of creative nerve--he would go on to direct the controversial and critically acclaimed film Bandit Queen, and later such high-profile/middle-brow English language films as Elizabeth, The Four Feathers, and Elizabeth: The Golden Age. For the blockbuster writing team of Javed Akhtar and Salim Khan, however, Mr. India was much more par for the course. The pair had, after all, taken Amitabh Bachchan into similar territory back in 1980 with Shaan. Still, their gift for churning out mind bogglingly weird masala movies might belie the team's importance to the history of their national cinema--for just a few years previous they had been a revolutionary force in Bollywood, virtually creating Amitabh's "Angry Young Man" persona single (or, uh, double) handedly with their masterful scripts for such unparalleled 1970s classics as Deewar, Sholay and Don.     Despite this pedigree--not to mention its commercial success--Mr. India still comes down on the slightly wilder and trashier side of Bollywood cinema (though far from the wildest or the trashiest). Still, just as one needs to seek balance in their overall cinematic diet, one's experience of Bollywood can't be all Guru Dutt and Mother India. For, while those more esteemed films can elicit an emotional response with their more nuanced depictions of the human condition, for a movie as silly as Mr. India to sweep you up in its enthusiasms--getting you to root for an invisible Indian everyman against a jackbooted cartoon straw man called Mogambo--is pretty impressive in its own right. Hail Mogambo! Labels: Bollywood, Science Fiction, Stars: Amrish Puri, Year: 1987 posted by Todd at 3:05 PM | 7 Comments Sunday, November 11, 2007Katilon Ke Kaatil Release Year: 1981Country: India Starring: Dharmendra, Rishi Kapoor, Zeenat Aman, Tina Munim, Amjad Khan, Nirupa Roy, Shakti Kapoor. Writer: Anil and Arjun Hingorani Director: Anil and Arjun Hingorani Producer: Arjun Hingorani Music: Anandji Veerji Shah and Kalyanji Veerji Shah Availability: Buy it from India Weekly Try to imagine that, like me, your life has become a steady parade of disappointments and squandered potential, but then one day, the following happens: having recently been enlightened as to the existence of a Bollywood ninja movie -- a rip-off of American Ninja from the same cast and crew that brought the world Disco Dancer, no less -- you go to your little website forum and theorize that, given the popularity of kungfu films in India and the proliferation of Bruce Lee imitators and crappy "Bruceploitation" films during the 1970s, there was no way Bollywood didn't produce at least one film cashing in on the death and popularity of Bruce Lee. After proffering this notion, however, subsequent searches for Indian Bruce Lee exploitation films yield no results. This does not sway you from your belief, of course, and given how poor the quality and variety of coverage for Indian cult films is, it hardly surprises you. But it does cause you to put your search for such a film on the back burner in favor of tracking down the remaining Kommissar X films or finding a copy of Agente Logan: Missione Ypotron. And then, one day you are emailing back and forth at work with your friend Beth about Mithun Chakraborty's film Dance Dance. You search for, find, and play a clip from the film on YouTube, and then, out of the corner of your eye after the clip has finished and YouTube is displaying those "if you liked this, check this one out" recommendations, you see something titled "Dharmendra vs Bruce Li."
Still your heart young movie fan, you tell yourself as you struggle to click on the clip before it vanishes and is replaced by another recommended clip. But alas! You are too slow, and the clip vanishes. No worries, though. As your trembling fingers fumble at the keyboard, you manage to type "Dharmendra vs Bruce Li" into the search box. Careful, lad! Don't let your giddy excitement get the better of you. This could be nothing more than some lame DJ splicing together disparate clips of the world's premiere Bruce Lee imitator with scenes of Indian action star Dharmendra, all set to some generic techno or hip hop beat out of the German underground. Feeling both fear and elation, you play the clip. And there it is! Dharmendra, with what appears to be a picnic table cloth wrapped around his neck, locked in mortal combat with...no! Not Bruce Li! Not Bruce Li at all! Why that's...no it isn't possible. And yet...yes! Yes it is! That's Dharmendra locked in mortal combat with Bruce Le -- the world's premiere Bruce Li imitator! Finally! After years of disappointment and failure, after watching your dreams crumble and become so many ashes, the world is new and young again, and there is hope yet, you tell yourself. A quick scan of the comments turns up the title of the movie -- Katilon Ke Kaatil, though no one seems able to agree on the number of the letter "a" that goes into each word. Apprehensive, you sneak on over to India Weekly to do a title search, and...argh! No luck! But wait! What if I alter the configuration of a's in the words -- success! And a mere $6.99 and four days later, it is yours.
And then you discover not only does it star Dharmendra -- 70s/80s action icon and father of 80s/90s action Icon Sonny Deol -- it also stars your favorite Bombay bombshell baby, Zeenat Aman. How could this deal get any better, you ask yourself as tears of joy stream from your eyes. And then Dharmendra fights Bigfoot. I've complained, most recently and verbosely in my review of the 1967 espionage film Farz, about the lack of quality information regarding Bollywood films, especially the crazier and older ones. Let me now shift gears and offer up a bit of celebration. I knew nothing about Katilon Ke Kaatil. I had never heard of it, and I had no reason to ever think that I needed to hear of it, let alone see it. And then I found out this Katilon Ke Kaatil featured Bruce Le, apparently getting his ass handed to him by Dharmendra, and I was excited. There were no reviews online anywhere, and as usual, all links led to about a thousand identical webpages that did nothing but list the top two or three actors and the musical composer, surrounded by lots of Flash and Google ads. But no worries. I didn't need to know anything about the film other than Bruce Le was in it, along with Dharmendra. That was more than enough for me. And then I'm sitting there watching the movie and goddamned General Ursus from Planet of the Apes shows up!
That's why I enjoy doing this. After all these years, and after Teleport City has failed to amount to anything other than a tiny niche site that gets no attention from people looking for someone to write liner notes or a book or join their circle of occult-obsessed jaded rich people who retire to country manors for weekend binges of Bacchanalian debauchery and excess, there remains the simple thrill of stumbling across an unbelievably ludicrous movie like Katilon Ke Kaatil. Like many masala films, a simple description of the basic plot hardly does justice to the madness that whirls about it like a raging tornado. If I told you this is a movie about two thieves who pose as the long lost sons of a wealthy woman so they can get their hands on her loot, you'd probably shrug and think to yourself, "Yeah, seen it." And if you know a thing or two about Bollywood films, you'll probably even think, "And I bet in the end, they are redeemed and turn to good when they find out they really are her long lost sons." A plot summary like that hardly leaves room for Dharmendra to fight Bigfoot or punch Bruce Le through a brick wall. But then, if you really know two or three things about Bollywood, you know that they require a simple plot wrapped in fantastically convoluted and outrageous incidents that detour the movie into truly warped territory.
As summarized above, Dharmendra and Rishi Kapoor star as Ajit and Munna, the two sons of a wealthy family in possession of a sacred, jewel-encrusted gold chariot. Evil bearded villain Black Cobra (Amjad Khan -- Qurbani, Jani Dost, Bombay 405 Miles) takes time out from shooting his own men and obsessively stroking his Blofeld brand evil cat in order to attempt to steal the chariot, a plot which involves him dressing up like a police inspector then berating other police inspectors for not questioning his identity thoroughly enough. As part of the demonstration of how crappy the police are, Black Cobra tells them how easy it would be for Black Cobra to waltz in, steal a cop's gun, and hold everyone hostage. Then he does just that, which is pretty cool as far as super villain bravado goes. In the ensuing fracas, however, Cobra and his men are unable to pull off the heist, so they return later than night to pick up where they left off. You'd think if the most notorious criminal in India was after your jewel-encrusted golden chariot, you'd up the security or something. Now this fracas eventually results in young Ajit and Munna getting separated from their family. Munna is discovered, crying on the road, by...oh no! It's that wacky eyebrow guy who annoyed us so in Farz. Over a decade later, he still annoys. Luckily, the movie doesn't let him delve too deeply into his Shemp-quality shenanigans. While Munna is rescued by an aging odious comic relief actor, Ajit has it slightly worse -- but just slightly -- when he witnesses Black Cobra beating his father to death with a studded leather strap. In an attempt to avenge the murder, Ajit winds up falling off a cliff and into a passing train full of hay, where he lands right next to a slumbering woman who thanks the gods for delivering this child to her. This is going to be the least of the movie's improbably events. Meanwhile, Black Cobra's right hand man, Michael...all right! It's Shakti Kapoor! We last saw him as the evil military commander in Commando. He's still trying to get that damn chariot, because despite all the killing and the whipping and the falling off of cliffs into trains full of hay, Black Cobra still didn't manage to get the chariot. And they still don't get it! Geez! I think even I could have stolen it at this point. Michael, on the other hand, gets blown up in a helicopter explosion.
Ajit is afflicted with plot-convenient amnesia, and is raised by the woman as Badshah, a local thug and all-around bully. Munna grows up to become a hustler and con artist. Good thing these guys always grow up to be cops or criminals. What would Bollywood do if the story was, "Two brothers separated at birth. One grows up to be a helpdesk operator at Dell's call center; the other becomes assistant manager at a record store." Hmm, that sounds like a Bollywood vehicle for John Cusack. Anyway, the movie settles in to an incredibly long and often boring middle section here in which Badshah woos a singer named Jamila (Zeenat Aman -- Don, Shalimar, Qurbani) while Munna plays cat and mouse with another charming thief (Tina Munim). The bad news is that the musical numbers are pretty boring, the comedy is unfunny, and the drama is tepid at best. There is no chemistry at all between Zeenat and Dharmendra, and their entire relationship comes out of nowhere. Rishi and Tina fare slightly better, thanks in part to Rishi being the impish one and Tina having a monkey in sultan pants as a criminal accomplice. But still, this lengthy second act is a chore to get through. It's punctuated by a completely out-of-the-blue showdown between Dharmendra in his hot pink kerchief (somehow, he makes it work!) and Bruce Le. In the years immediately following the death of Bruce Lee, sleazy film producers rushed to crank out an endless series of ultra low-budget kungfu crap that featured a guy who looked marginally like Bruce Lee, or had Bruce Lee's haircut, or thumbed his nose like Bruce Lee, or whatever they could think of to trick people who didn't know better into watching what they thought was a Bruce Lee film. The best-known of the Bruce Lee imitators was a Taiwanese actor named Ho Chung Tao. Ho was nothing special and had no notable career to speak of until producers tapped him to be the stand-in for Bruce Lee as they struggled to piece together a finished film from the footage the real Bruce Lee had shot for Game of Death. Ho declined, but shortly after that he hooked up with producer Jimmy Shaw, who came up with the Bruce Li name and kicked off Li's career as Bruce Lee lite. Li starred in a string of Bruce Lee biopics, films in which he was passed off as a true student of Bruce Lee, or as the official successor appointed by Bruce Lee in unofficial sequels to Bruce Lee movies, or as Bruce Lee himself.
Li's success as Lee meant that other producers were looking for their own Bruce Lee, or their own Bruce Li. Among these was Wong Kin Lung, an actor at the Shaw Brothers film studio in Hong Kong. Wong had starred in, among other things, the Shaw Brothers outrageous sci-fi kungfu epic Inframan alongside Danny Lee (best known for his roll in John Woo's The Killer, but also the star of a couple early Bruce Lee exploitation films, one of which -- Bruce Lee I Love You -- starred Bruce's real-life mistress, Betty Ting Pei, and was based on her version of what happened between her and Bruce). Like Bruce Li, Wong was adopted by another studio and redubbed as Bruce Le in order to cash in on his passing resemblance to Bruce Lee. Le never achieved the acclaim of Li, as ridiculous as all this may sound, but he did have a knack for showing up in films from other countries, often with absolutely no connection whatsoever to the plot. This happened in the ridiculous time travel film Future Hunters, where star Robert Patrick is looking for the Spear of Longinus and thinks this monk might have some clues as to its whereabouts. Exactly why a Buddhist monk would have info on a Christian relic I don't know, but whatever. Anyway, he goes to the temple, fights Bruce Le for no reason, and then goes, "Well, they didn't known anything," and that's the last of it. Le's appearance in Katilon Ke Kaatil is no less bizarre. Dharmendra has attempted to win Jamila's heart by pretending to hang himself out of heartache and disguising himself as a famous singer. When both deceptions fail to convince Jamila that Badshah is the man for her, she wanders off into a garden and walks by a table where Bruce Le is sitting. He jumps up to menace her, and Dhamrnedra shows up to fight Bruce Le, and that's the first and last we see of Bruce Le. He's not a henchman of Black Cobra. He has co connection at all to the movie. He just happens to be sitting there for one scene. That said, even though Bruce Le gets little respect for his accomplishments in shoddy Hong Kong productions, his fight with Dharmendra -- or with an anonymous stunt man (probably from Hong Kong) in a Dharmendra wig -- showcases just how advanced even mediocre Hong Kong fight choreography was when compared to choreography from anywhere else in the world. Bollywood has no shortage of kungfu fights, but while they are often energetic and outrageous, they are also terrible. Even the best of them is pretty bad when held up in comparison to the fights in a similarly budgeted Hong Kong movie. This isn't to sling mud at Bollywood -- Hong Kong in the 80s blew everyone away. But that's really made obvious when Bruce Le shows up to thumb his nose and allow Indian film distributors to sell this as a Bruce Lee versus Dharmendra movie. See India's number one action star beat the tar out of the world's number one martial arts legend! Never mind that Bruce had been dead for over a decade. He was the Tupac of kungfu films, making new movies long after his death. Too bad no one ever tried to hire a rapper who looked a lot like Tupac and have him release new albums under the name Tupak Shakir or something.
Although it has nothing to do with the movie in which it is nestled, the Bruce Le scene is pretty great. The fight choreography is suddenly infinitely better as two seasoned vets of the Hong Kong film industry (again, assuming the anonymous Dharmendra stand-in was Chinese) go head to head, with occasional shots of Dharmendra staggering backward or flying through a wall. Katilon Ke Kaatil has its share of problems, but a lack of people flying through walls is not among them. Then we return to the movie itself, which drags on for a while as we maneuver Munna and Badshah/Ajit into meeting one another and ending up both trying to con their actual mother -- who they do not realize is their mother. We also learn than Michael is still alive, having faked his own death to escape the wrath of Black Cobra (who in twenty years has not aged at all) over failing to get that chariot. And even twenty years later, Cobra is still talking about that goddamned chariot. Surely he could have come up with some other scheme by now. Or at least succeeded in stealing a golden chariot from a solitary woman who is still collapsing with grief over the loss of her sons like it happened yesterday. When Black Cobra discovers Michael is still alive (by happening to pull into the one gas station in all of India where Michael happens to work), he sicks Recha on the poor bastard. And that's where Katilon Ke Kaatil really starts to get weird.
Recha is described by Black Cobra as being the hellish offspring of a woman raped by a bear, but for all intents and purposes, he is a gorilla from Planet of the Apes. He's also bullet proof. While people are scared of him based on his size alone, no one seems all that amazed by the fact that this giant, fur-covered sasquatch of a beast exists. Maybe India is crawling with sasquatch men, or maybe the countryside is full of leather-clad gorillas on horseback catching unlucky humans in their nets. Recha manages to shatter Michael's leg and kill Michael's beloved wife, meaning we now have our villain who can be redeemed by teaming up with the good guys. His interest in the chariot revived, Black Cobra devises a plot that relies heavily on the sort of contrivances and coincidences that only happen in a Bollywood film, where the improbability of anything can easily be explained away with a dismissive wave of the hand and a statement about events being guided by the hand of the gods. Black Cobra's plot hinges on the mother randomly wandering up to a temple to pray for the return of her sons, and this temple will just happen to be the one where Black Cobra and his gang have disguised themselves as priests. Predicting that she will know her youngest son by the trident pendant he wears, he then gives one of the henchmen a trident pendant and sends him off to randomly run into the woman. Naturally, after a bit of wackiness, Munna ends up with the pendant.
It all goes on for a while, until Munna and Ajit have their big revelation and team up to kick Black Cobra's ass. If the middle portion of the movie has been somewhat a chore to get through, at least the investment is paid off for in the finale, in which our heroes, teamed up with Michael, battle Recha in a lengthy and hilariously awesome showdown that culminates in them blowing up a huge vat labeled "Highly Inflammable." They then infiltrate Black Cobra's inner sanctum by disguising themselves as members of a dance troupe Black Cobra has hired to entertain his men and celebrate the successful theft of the chariot, which by this point, is an operation that probably cost him more than the actual value of the chariot. This represents...what? Like the ten millionth time the good guys have infiltrated the bad guy's lair via a troupe of dancers? Why do these bad guys keep hiring dance troupes to come in and perform for them in their secret lair? Doesn't bussing in a bunch of dancers sort of spoil the whole "secret" part of the secret lair idea? And, of course, Jamila and whatever Munna's thief girlfriend's name is are part of the troupe, even though neither has ever been associated with the troupe before and Tina (because I don't know if she's ever given a name in this movie) has never been established as a singer or dancer. Making matters sillier, Black Cobra sits the chariot out in the middle of his throne room/dance hall, and the disguised heroes come out and sing a song that is basically a summary of everything Black Cobra has done to their family. I guess this is a variation of Hamlet, where they stage a play that recreates a murder Hamlet thinks has happened, but it doesn't seem like the best way to maintain your cover. Oh well, it all leads to our heroes killing about fifty million guys Arnold Schwarzenegger style, so that's OK.
Katilon Ke Kaatil has its share of awesome action sequences, but ultimately, they are too scarce to make up for the rest of the film, which rarely rises above the point of being mildly interesting and often sinks below the point that things become tedious. The Bruce Le fight is great, as is Dharmendra's showdown with some Steve Reeves looking bodybuilder in hot pants, and of course the finale is wonderful, but there's an awful long road in between these morsels. Dharmendra doesn't exude much charisma in this film, and at times I'm not even sure he's aware of the fact that he's being filmed. Rishi is more energetic, but really, he's often upstaged by the monkey in shiny sultan pants. The biggest disappointment of all, however, is Zeenat Aman, who here contributes absolutely nothing to the movie. For a woman who built her career on challenging the conventional "damsel in distress" uselessness of a woman in Bollywood films, to see her as a conventional damsel in distress who is completely incapable of doing anything is a major let-down. She doesn't whip out any kungfu, she doesn't use her brains to outwit -- she doesn't do anything but stand there. You could have hired any woman to fill this role? Why cast Zeenat Aman unless you want Zeenat Aman? And having Zeenat means she's gonna kick some ass, one way or another. Not so, here. Rishi Kapoor is better in his role, but like everything in this film, he's underdeveloped. Rishi is part of the Kapoor dynasty that seems inescapable in Bollywood. Raj Kapoor is his dad. Rajiv is his brother. Shashi and Shammi are his uncles. Babita was his sister-in-law. Kareena and Karisma are his nieces. It may be physically impossible at this point to watch a Bollywood film that doesn't star one of the Kapoor clan. Katilon Ke Kaatil represents the first time I've seen Rishi in action, and he wasn't half bad. He's not much of an action star, playing second fiddle to an occasionally bored and/or confused looking Dharmendra in much the same way Shashi played second banana to Amitabh in Shaan. The big difference is that, while Amitabh could make an average film above-average, Dharmendra cannot.
Dharmendra -- who we first met in the excellent swingin' 60s espionage adventure Aankhen -- is best known to modern fans for being the father of 90s action superstar Sonny Deol, though when you see Dharmendra in action here, you might wonder if Sonny isn't his son after all, but in fact a clone. Dharmendra was a big deal with a lot of great films under his belt, but Katilon Ke Kaatil isn't one of them. By the 1980s, it looks like he was floundering a bit and trying to find his way in a cinematic landscape that had been changed considerably by the arrival of Amitabh Bachchan. However, even in his mid-forties, he looks convincing in action and makes a credible tough guy, even if whupping Bruce Le is a bit of a stretch (seriously, compare those physiques and the speed of motion -- and dig Dharmendra's numchuck skills). As with his son, the trouble begins when Dharmendra has to do something other than kick someone's ass. While he doesn't do that nearly enough in this movie, when he does, it's pretty great. I think I failed to mention the part where he fights a guy in blackface. And I mean, literally. The guy's make-up is soot black. Shakti Kapoor is his usual self, always dependable. Black Cobra certainly looks imposing, but Amjad Khan could have played him way more over the top, and that would have made this film better. Rounding out the main cast, Tina Munim has a little more to do than Zeenat, owing primarily to the fact that she has a monkey thief for a sidekick. It's bad news when Zeenat isn't the most memorable woman in your movie, but such is the case here. Tina's performance is by no means stand-out, but she and Rishi show all the charisma and chemistry that Dharmendra and Zeenat lack. She started her career as a pet project of Dev Anand's, and the chemistry she shows here with Rishi must have reached beyond this single film, because they were frequently paired together. Still, her career never really took off, and she eventually left India to attend college in America, returning to marry an industrialist and become a charity events coordinator. Also, the woman is seriously cute.
The musical numbers are also pretty dull. Although you get a couple glittery nightclub scenes, they don't make up for the endless scenes of a holy man wandering into the camera to sing summaries of the plot up to that point. And even the nightclub scenes succeed on the merits of psychedelic set design rather than the merits of the singing, dancing, or even the costumes. We do have the scene where Dharmendra and Zeenat get drunk and dance around Mumbai, playing on teeter totters and then, for no reason other than Benny Hill level comedy, dress Dharmendra up in drag, but even this goes on a little too long, and you'll start thinking to yourself, "Man, I wonder what that monkey in the genie pants is up to." As much as I love the outlandish bits, Katilon Ke Kaatil is ultimately kind of a let-down. There is too much uninteresting filler, and Zeenat is completely wasted in a do-nothing role that is beneath her talents. I have plenty of tolerance for slapdash Bollywood action films, but even I was toying with the fast forward button for part of this. And while there are plenty of films of somewhat questionable taste I may foist upon people, often starring Mithun Chakraborty, I can't see myself doing the same with the whole of Katilon Ke Kaatil, though I will absolutely make everyone watch the Bruce Le stuff and the fight scenes with Bigfoot...err, Recha. Those are why I watched this movie, and they were worth the effort even if the rest of it really wasn't. Next quest: I know Bollywood must have ripped off Santo movies at some point... Labels: Action, Bollywood, Martial Arts: Kungfu, Stars: Dharmendra, Stars: Zeenat Aman, Year: 1981 posted by Keith at 4:30 PM | 5 Comments Tuesday, October 02, 2007Farz
DIGG THIS ARTICLE. 1967, India. Starring Jeetendra, Babita Kapoor, Aruna Irani, Kanchana, Sajjan, Agha, Manohar Deepak, Mukri, Mohan Choti, V.D. Puranik. Written by Vishwamitter Adil, Arudra. Directed by Ravikant Nagaich.
At the risk of sounding even more like a broken record than I usually do, allow me once again reiterate a common theme for much of what we discuss here: exploring the vast world of international cult cinema is as frustrating as it is rewarding. Rewarding because, obviously, it opens a whole world -- quite literally -- of totally outrageous movies that will completely blow your mind, that the average "man on the street" has no idea even exists, and that are packed to the gills with glorious outlandish beauty. Frustrating because, just as obviously, so many of these films -- especially one from outside the United States, Europe, and Japan -- are so very hard to find, even in their country of origin. Similarly, even finding the most basic information on many of these movies, both in print and online, is often almost impossible. We often run into this when attempting to research (yes, believe it or not, I do attempt to research most of my subjects, albeit rather half-assedly at times) old Turkish cult films, where what little information does exist is often somewhat incestuous in nature -- about the same movies, and drawing from the same very limited pool of knowledge, and thus saying more or less the same thing. There are so few of these films available, even in Turkey, that the growth of a fanbase is limited by the lack of material. In other words, we want to be fans of Turkish cult cinema; there's just not enough of it to go around, and we have so little material to which we can refer (since there is so little to go around -- you can see the vicious circle). We also run into it frequently when attempting to wade into the lush lagoon that is Indian cult cinema. India is in a much better state than Turkey, at least when it comes to the accessibility of films (you at least have a decent chance of tracking down a DVD of an Indian film), but there are still huge holes in both availability and discussion of certain types of films, no matter how popular these films may have been during their original release. Because they were discussed in Pete Tombs book Mondo Macabro (the limited pool of knowledge I alluded to last paragraph, and the source of almost every fact anyone has to throw out in regards to many of these films), the sleazy 80s horror films of the Ramsay Brothers are perhaps the most famous example of the disdain for such product. The Ramsay Brothers horror films were ridiculously popular in the 80s, but the only release of them to the home video market has been by the Mondo Macabro DVD label. No Indian release of any Ramsay horror film exists as of this writing, and in fact, even bringing them up to the average Indian DVD store clerk will be met with a snort of disdain or a denial that they even exist -- although one young guy I met was enthusiastic in his love of them and bemoaned his culture's unwillingness to put the Ramsays out there on DVD. But this guy, despite being of Indian heritage, was an American, so I don't even know if he counts.
The Ramsays are hardly alone in their plight, though. In fact, aside from a select few classics and a slew of whatever was released this year, writing about Indian film is thin indeed. The James Bond inspired 1967 blockbuster Farz is a perfect example. Despite being a huge hit, inspiring numerous copycats, and launching the careers of two decently famous Bollywood performers (Jeetendra and Babita Kapoor), Farz -- like most of India's entries into the category of swingin' 60s spy films -- is practically persona non grata when it comes to any information or reviews about it, though it does fare better than the Ramsay Brothers horror films. At least Farz is available on a shoddy looking DVD release. Despite the success Farz enjoyed in 1967, about the best you can hope for if you search for the film online is a one- or two-line review on the IMDB that goes something like, "This movie is old." Google returns a lot of hits that go to soundtrack information for a year 2000 movie of the same name, starring Sonny Deol, and if you scroll down far enough, you'll eventually find links to Teleport City's review of Aankhen (a 1968 Bollywood spy film that was inspired by the success of Farz) and Poptique's survey of Bollywood rip-offs of James Bond (which only mentions Farz in passing, but contains plenty of awesome info on some other Bolly-Bonds). If I go to the few English-language books on Bollywood, which all tend to be overly academic and humorless, there is an even greater dearth of information on this or just about any other "popcorn" film. As it is still in its infancy, despite the longevity of the industry, English language books about Bollywood tend to be dry, intellectual studies of the same crop of "usual suspects." They turn their collective noses up at giving much time over to films like Farz in favor of printing yet another chapter that provides the same analysis of Mother India as was given in the last four or five books. We get it! Mother India was an historic movie, a landmark of Indian cinema, and the mothers in Indian films often represent the country itself. Can we movie on now to something a little fresher and less commonly flogged? Like, I don't know, dudes in white Chelsea boots doing judo and fighting arch-villains?
It's especially odd to me, though hardly surprising, that so much of what is written about Indian cinema in English is so bland and academic when the cinema itself is so dedicated to populist approval, melodrama, and celebration. If anything, this dedication to eliminating the popcorn film severely limits the quality and variety of discussion, and thus our understanding as a whole, in deference to making everyone think the history of Indian cinema is comprised entirely of Mother India, The World of Apu, Deewar, and Devdas (and Disco Dancer, of course). Plenty to write about many stars, yet almost none of the books so much as mention Mithun Chakraborty, though he was wildly popular (and continues to be one of Teleport City's most popular search terms). I mean, you don't have to praise the guy, but pretending a huge hunk of popular cinema doesn't exist just because it doesn't jibe with some overly romanticized and over-intellectualized delusion of what an industry is hardly sounds like solid historical work to me. Somewhere, a spirited, good-natured book about crazy Bollywood action films, swank spy movies, and horror films is waiting to be written. And Mithun will be on the god-damned cover, baby! Of course, things are not as bad now as they used to be. Thanks to books like Mondo Macabro, there is a tiny bit more discussion of Indian cult film than there used to be, though the bulk of this discussion is still limited to paraphrasing what was already written about in the book (I did it myself, just now, when discussing Ramsay Brothers horror films). That book is why I ever ventured into an Indian video store, or started searching for retailers online. And the rise of DVD and the Internet means that more people know about Bollywood than previously (when only a billion people knew about it), so much so that it became a trendy buzzword among Hollywood stars, all of whom started claiming they wanted to make Bollywood films, though none of them actually want to. And while the world of print may still be thin (disregarding all the celebrity gossip tabloids), there have been several exceptional Bollywood related film review sites launched over the past few years (including two -- View from the Brooklyn Bridge and The Bollybob Society that spend a healthy amount of time on cult films from the 60s and 70s -- and thanks to an obsession with Sashi Kapoor and an admirable respect for swanky 60s fashion, Beth Loves Bollywood is on board as well, even if she sticks to the romantic movies instead of stuff full of spies and mummies). But even among cult film fans, Bollywood is a cult. While Amitabh Bachchan's Don may have succeeded to some degree in breaking out into slightly wider global cult film fan awareness (of the friends I have who are cult film fans who came to Bollywood, almost every single one of them saw Don as their first Indian film), there is still a staggeringly long way to go before the documentation of Indian cult cinema is anywhere near as vast and detailed as that of America, Japan, Europe, and Hong Kong. In other words, in a world that offers you up something like eight million reviews of Zombie Lake, you'd think you'd be able to find at least one review of Farz.
And yet this is not the case. Not online, and not in print, where the only information I could find on Farz was an entry in the title index of the mammoth Encyclopedia of Indian Film, which I shall now reprint in its entirety: Farz (1967). There are plenty of reasons that explain this, and I think at one point or another, we've been over most of them. First and foremost, speaking from an English-speaking American standpoint, has been the absence of the movies themselves, which always makes discussing movies difficult. While even the cheapest, most rotten of European sex and gore films often got dubbed and distributed in the United States in one form or another, Indian films were always marketed solely to Indian immigrant populations -- with the films of Satyajit Ray and a couple others being the ultra-rare art-house, film school exceptions. Tons of European, Japanese, and Hong Kong productions were dumped into the American market, either as grindhouse filler or for the emerging home video market. And each of these films found a fanbase that built a network of support around the films. Fanzines, fan clubs, so on. This never happened with Indian films. They never came to the grindhouse or the drive-in. They never got retitled and dumped onto American VHS alongside Lucio Fulci, Godzilla, and Bruce Lee. They were always targeted specifically at Indian populations, in Indian neighborhoods, distributed by Indian companies. AIP never bought Farz, retitled it, and gave it a new score by Les Baxter. Maybe it's because the films were just too foreign, what with these songs and dances and brown people in them. But heck, Japanese movies got distributed. Hell, Lo Lieh was one of the ugliest mother fuckers in the 1970s, and he got distribution. And it's not like you couldn't edit out the musical numbers for the American market. I'm sure someone who knows more about global film markets can fill in the details, but whatever the cause, the end result was that Indian films never had time to build up a fanbase outside of Indian populations, and hell, maybe that's all they needed. It's not like there are only a few Indians in the world. If half of India paid a buck to see your movie, you'd be doing all right. But that's neither here nor there, and it all started changing, slowly, in the middle of the 1990s -- no coincidence that this increased global awareness of Indian cinema corresponds with the increased ubiquity of the Internet and DVD, both vastly cheap ways to distribute information. Suddenly, the world of Indian cinema previously inaccessible to those who did not speak the language was much more accessible. The move from VHS to DVD meant that subtitling a movie in English was much more appealing than it had been, especially when you took into account that much of your audience for home video would be Indians and non-Indians living abroad and, potentially, unable to speak a lick of Hindi, Tamil, or whatever other language your film might be in. People have always been curious about the pop culture of other people, and the Internet finally helped people realize the globalization of pop culture that has been brewing through fanzines and clubs.
Because there was already such a huge and vocal cult fanbase (relative to the admittedly small numbers of people into cult films) for the films of the aforementioned countries of the United States, Japan, Hong Kong, and Europe (what? Europe's not a single country?), they were the first out of the gate and onto the internet. The first cult film site I remember visiting was dedicated to Godzilla. Throughout the latter half of the 90s, cult film review and discussion sites popped up like wildfires (Teleport City among them). It was easy, because so much had already been written and could so easily be "ported" into this new medium. The web was probably the greatest thing to ever happen to cult film fans, as now the networks we traversed to obtain films became much easier to navigate. Bollywood was not entirely unrepresented in the early days of the Web, but it's only more recently that substantial discussion of Bollywood films has begun to flirt with approaching the quantity and quality of what has been written about other countries. Strange, given that the number of people who watch Bollywood films obviously dwarfs the number of people who would watch Hell of the Living Dead over and over -- but not so strange, considering that most of the people watching Bollywood films are just people. They're not the kind, if they even have access to the technology, to rush out and start a website, any more than my parents might rush out and start a film website just because they go to the movies. Most of what was being discussed about Bollywood was either from mainstream newspaper columnists, or it was from fans discussing the same new movies as these professional critics. As far as I can detect, India just doesn't have the same "cult of cult" that some other countries have (and many others don't). I mean, yeah, there's definitely a cult status to a guy like Amitabh or Shahrukh, but that's an entirely different type of cult. India just didn't have enough weird movie nerds with Geocities pages to drive a full-fledged exploration of their country's battier film fare.
Additionally, much of the discourse regarding Indian cinema revolved less around the films themselves and more around the soundtrack or scandals that may have enveloped the stars. Search for any Bollywood film, even modern blockbusters, and for every actual discussion of the film, you will probably find a thousand links to soundtrack info. Non-Indian resources also tended to focus on more current films, because those were the easiest to get a hold of and because, well, they were newer. More times than not, though, you will find a generic aggregated page that appears on like a hundred different but identical sites and does nothing but provide extremely basic cast information (usually only a release date and one or two star names). But like I said, things are starting to change. More Indian film fans outside of the elitist community of critics are finding a voice online, and the people writing about the films in English are branching out as older films find their way on to DVD and they run out of new films to review. Cult film fans who aren't accustomed to the peculiarities of Indian cinema (i.e., the musical numbers and the inclusion of romantic melodrama in almost everything) are also starting to get used to things, or at least are learning that they can fast forward past the musical numbers (the fools) and get to the action. The next couple years, especially as India's middle class continues to grow, will be interesting as Bollywood begins to find its nerdy cult movie culture legs.
Of course, some of the films will continue to get short shrift one way or the other, but that's nothing new. We had to fight long and hard to get European cult films to the level of relatively easy availability that we enjoy now (who would have thought fifteen years ago that there would be a special remastered edition of Jess Franco's Girl from Rio -- or Jess Franco's anything, for that matter?), and there are still plenty of gaps. We are here to discuss a swanky Bollywood spy film, for example, and even swanky European spy films remain, for the most part, notoriously difficult to track down as the global community of cult film fans tends to favor the sex and horror films. But still, as bad as things may be, they're better than they've ever been before, and while there may be precious little written about Aankhen or Farz, and while films like Gunmaster and Agent Vinod may still be MIA, the fact remains than even a decade ago, I never would have imagined that all it would take for me to watch a subtitled -- albeit ragged looking -- copy of an Indian spy film from 1967 would be a couple clicks on what people call a "computer." Farz was India's first real attempt at making a James Bond style espionage thriller, and while it hardly lives up to the production values of a Bond film, it manages to achieve, at the very least, the level of some of the lower tier Eurospy films from the same time period. And calling any of these films "lower tier" is absolutely not a reflection of their potential to entertain. Farz, for example, obviously suffers from a low budget (though it's hard to tell whether some of the film's crudity -- abrupt music cue changes, choppy edits, etc -- is actually part of the film, or whether it evolved after decades of the print being abused and spliced), and it takes several missteps, but it's hardly an unenjoyable film, though at times it just barely manages to be so.
Actually, Farz really only takes one big misstep, though it's enough of a misstep to kill the film dead in its tracks any time it happens. I am speaking of the odious slapstick comic relief that comes in the form of a couple of bumbling brothers who become the loyal sidekicks of our main hero. Their sub Franco and Cicco quality shtick is unfunny within five seconds of making itself known, and from time to time when the film needs to pad itself out and they don't have a musical number handy, they'll cut to five minutes of these dips walking into walls or grabbing each other by the shoulders and falling down. But I'm getting ahead of myself, and thinking about the comedy in this movie, as in most movies, is going to make me mad when, in fact, I thought Farz was all right. Even though it features a pie fight. Where did all those pies even come from? Did every single person have a pie? No, no -- getting ahead of myself again. If I get too mad about the pies, I'll never get to the part where the guy with Khrushchev eyebrows leads a guard on a chase that does that thing where they keep running in and out of various doors, and they run into one door but out of another. Oh ho ho ho! Anyway, we kick things off with a dastardly plot already in progress. Seems some terrorists in ill-advised scarves are trying to blow up a dam. Luckily, heroic Indian secret agent 303 is on the case with his trusty camera to capture the bad guys red handed. He could have also considered shooting them or perhaps arranging ahead of time -- since he obviously knew where they were going to be -- for some sort of security force to swoop in and capture anyone. But I guess these were simpler time, and so instead he takes pictures of them and their car, shoots a little, then rushes off to...file his report? Develop his secret film? No. He rushes off to visit his younger sister, Kamla, though he does at least take time out to call his superior officer and tell him he has some important information, though apparently not important enough to tell right then and there. And he drops the film off to be developed not at a secret spy facility, but at a photomat down on the corner of the street. I'm starting to think our hero here not only isn't James Bond, but he's barely even Johnny English.
The terrorist organization consists of five guys -- two of whom wear scarves even though their short sleeve shirts indicate that it's not scarf season -- who are constantly berated by a guy who, in a European film, would have been played by Timothy Dalton. The guy's secret underground terrorist lair leaves a considerable amount to be desired, consisting as it does primarily of some cool Mario Bava-esque lighting and a folding card table with a rotary phone on it. Here's a tip for all of you who aspire to be a henchman for some megalomaniacal would-be world conqueror. If, on the day of your interview, you get a tour of the secret underground lair and it is furnished entirely with folding card tables and rotary phones, pass on whatever offer you are given. In fact, don't join up with any secret globe-conquering society that has a folding card table anywhere, let alone in the main control room. And if the main control room also doubles as storage space for crates and boxes...I don't know. Maybe the guy is new and villainy and just hasn't had time to unpack. He probably just bought Shakal's former secret lair off the EvilBay online auction site, and he doesn't get five minutes to set his stuff up before he's having to slap around incompetent henchmen. Speaking of which, if you are a would be world conqueror who just bought a new secret lair and are looking for a goon squad, don't hire anyone who wears a scarf in the summer, unless that person is a World War One flying ace or something. The terrorists pile into their station wagon and track Agent 303 to his sister's house, where they plant a time bomb in the engine of his car. They could have just shot him, but I guess they figure he went easy on them back at the dam, so it's the least they can do. The bomb is apparently set to go off eight million hours later, because 303 drives around, takes care of a few errands, returns his copy of Doctor No to the video store, and finally abandons his car at a dead end before the bomb goes off, leading to a shoot-out in which our noble hero and defender of Hindustani is gunned down and stabbed by a sexy femme fatale. Man what a way for the hero to start a film. Oops, wait. He's dead. I guess he's not the hero at all.
No, the hero is Gopal, aka Agent 116, played by future superstar Jeetendra in his first real lead role. When we meet Gopal, he is going what all good spies do during their off time, which is frolic through the hills with a sexy woman in cool 60s fashion. The call of duty interrupts their courtship, however, which is at least better than a courtship being interrupted by the call of nature, and soon Gopal is assigned to pick up Agent 303's case, track down the killers, and spoil whatever nefarious plot they might be hatching. En route to doing this he meets a gorgeous socialite named Sunita, played by yet another future superstar, Babita Kapoor, who is also the future superstar mother of superstar daughters Karisma and Kareena Kapoor (Kareena we met in the review our Asoka). And my goodness, what a beauty! Jeetendra plays Agent 116 a little less Bond, a little more Elvis, especially in his signature slim cut white suit with matching white Chelsea boots. When he wears a tuxedo, he even accessorizes with a Kentucky Colonel style ribbon tie. Now that's class. Plus, he's got Elvis' pompadour, and the musical nature of Bollywood cinema means that this is probably the closest thing you'll ever see to an Elvis swinging spy movie. Naturally, Gopal falls instantly in love, but in all honesty, if you could see Babita, you would too. The only problem is that her father happens to be that evil guy who yells at other evil guys! And so begins a series of action set-pieces that require Gopal to run up and down a whole lot of stairs, fight big fat guys, and partake in lavish party dances. Along for the ride are a couple of bumbling comic relief brothers who manage to be so far away from funny that they circle all the way back around to funny, but then pass that and jet still further out into the very nether regions of unfunny. One of them is short and has giant Khrushchev eyebrows. The other is blind as a bat and thus serves as Gopal's driver. Gopal must think they're about as useful as I do, because he frequently sends them on off-screen tasks, and thank God for it, because when they are on screen, this movie screeches to a halt. Oh, they are just awful! I mean, the annals of unfunny comic relief are stuffed to bursting, but these two really reached those rarefied airs of unfunny that only the most odious of odious comic relief can hope to attain. They achieve total unfunniness nirvana. Most of Gopal's mission revolves around recovering the lost film, which seems rather a moot mission considering that about five minutes into the assignment, the goons are attacking him over and over. You'd think that after you've seen each of them several times, shot a few of them, and seen them constantly piling in and out of the same station wagon, the photos of them would become needless. But I guess Gopal needs something to do in between Sunita's various parties and trading witty barbs with her father, so he goes after the film. To get it, he makes contact with Agent 303's sister, Kamla, who unfortunately has already been tricked by Sunita's father into thinking Gopal is the villain. This leads to her, through typically convoluted Bollywood fashion, attempting to seduce Gopal by dancing around his mod hotel room whilst wearing...Christ almighty; I almost don't even know how to describe it. It's like this, well, you see...OK. She has these leopard print bell bottom pants, right? And they're skin-tight, only they seem to be padded or at least cut Jodhpur style so that they make her ass look the size of the entire Indian subcontinent. And then she has a shiny pink top trimmed with leopard skin, and the whole thing is topped off with a sort of floppy pink and leopard skin pimp hat that would have looked right at home on Rudy Ray Moore's head. It is quite possibly the most astoundingly awful and yet hypnotic women's outfit I've seen this side of Two Undercover Angels. You remember when I reviewed Aankhen, and I made fun of Mala Sinha's bright yellow pants and gigantic, floppy green sombrero (or "pimp sombrero" if you will)? Well, Mala, allow me to apologize, because obviously you did not deserve to be made fun of. In light of what I have seen today, your outfit was downright sensible.
Eventually, we learn that Sunita's father is naught but a pawn of some sinister shadow organization, and in a dramatic turn of events, it doesn't turn out to be Pakistani in origin. At least, I don't think they're Pakistani. I'm pretty sure they're Chinese, but it's hard to tell, because a grimacing Indian guy in fake eyelids and yellow face make-up is scarcely any more convincing than a Caucasian in the same. A long time ago, I reviewed Fritz Lang sprawling Indian Epic and talked about guilt that may arise from watching a film in which Germans slap on some brown powder and pretend to be Indian. Well, no fear, because as soon as the grinning mastermind of Farz is revealed, India loses any moral high ground it could have ever hoped to claim. The villain is Chinese (I bet somewhere he's described as Chinese-Pakistani because, well, you know. Pakistan, right?) because he has to be, since the finale of Farz is a low-rent rip-off of Doctor No. It's also pretty awesome. Despite the cringe-inducing comedic scenes, Farz is a pretty good first attempt for India at a Bond style espionage adventure. Like the superior Aankhen that came shortly after, Farz takes its nationalism far more seriously than Bond or any of the Eurospy films would have ever dared. While Europe had entered a phase in which such flag-waving patriotism was considered silly, at best, India was still pretty serious about it. That said, however, Farz is hardly a deadly serious film. It may not be Bond, but it's certainly not The Day of the Jackal, either. Jeetendra makes for a bouncy, likable secret agent with a spectacular wardrobe, and Babita Kapoor is drop dead gorgeous as Sunita, even if she has almost nothing to contribute to the film other than herself in an array or gorgeous 60s outfits. That's enough for me. She certainly doesn't contribute much to the dancing. Babita, it turns out, was famously flat footed when it came to this most crucial aspect of Indian cinema. No less that Shammi Kapoor publicly marveled at her inability to learn even the most basic of steps, though he probably did that before he ballooned out to his current eight thousand pounds. Yeah, I'd like to see you dance now, Shammi. Come on! Dance, Fat Shammi, dance!
But if Babita wasn't a great dancer, it was made up for by the fact that she wasn't a great actress, either. She realistically described herself as a flowerpot in her films, paid to look pretty and get rescued by the hero, who is busily dancing his heart out and judoing fat guys. Babita's performance is hardly terrible here, and it's not like she has a lot to work with given the script, but she certainly doesn't carry the weight of the film the way Jeetendra does, with his jumping all over the place and giving rock and roll looks to the camera as he flops his pompadour down into his face in that way we all know drives the gals wild. His youthful enthusiasm mixed with Babita's two left feet (it only makes me love her more) necessitated the development of a new style of dance. Thus was born the more aerobic format we still see in many of the films today, with less dancing and more just sort of running around, jumping, and tumbling. If you are looking to explore India's contributions to the 60s spy craze, then Farz is important because it was more or less the first. For that reason alone, you should give it a go. And if you need other reasons, there's Babita looking dreamy, Jeetendra looking steamy, and that one chick in her nightmarish leopard woman pimp attire. But as is often the case, first rarely means best, and Farz is far from the best India has to offer. In fact, the movie directly inspired by Farz' success, Aankhen, is a far better film that uses many of the same elements but does them better and without a lengthy pie fight. And seriously, man, all of sudden there are like ten thousand pies in that scene. Why were there so many pies? It just doesn't make any sense at all!
If you have a high tolerance for low-rent European spy films, then you're probably going to be able to get through Farz and, like me, wring a little enjoyment out of it. It has some trippy lightning and camera work, some decent, if occasional, action, a great finale and villain, and good music and musical numbers. In fact, people who don't care for Indian films are often told to just fast forward through the musical numbers, but let me suggest this instead. Since the music here is awesome, watch the music numbers, and instead fast forward through any scene involving the bumbling brothers. You'll be much happier watching Babita pose than you will watching those two bump their heads and fall down. Despite its sundry short-comings, Farz managed to become a pretty big hit. Jeetendra became a bona fide leading man, and Babita sustained a decent career despite her limitations, until she finally retired to become a business manager for her even more successful daughters. If you are unfamiliar with the peculiarities of Indian cinema, a film like Farz might take some getting used to, but once that happens, it's at least as enjoyable as many of its European brethren. Aankhen is still the better film to watch, but Farz is important historically and worth a look. Just don't look too long at the leopard outfit, or it'll turn your eyes to ash. Labels: Bollywood, Espionage, Year: 1967 posted by Keith at 12:27 AM | 2 Comments Wednesday, April 04, 2007Naksha
DIGG THIS ARTICLE. 2006, India. Starring Sunny Deol, Vivek Oberoi, Sameera Reddy, Jackie Shroff, Suhasini Mulay, Navni Parihar, Liliput, Mridula Chandrashekar. Directed by Sachin Bajaj. Written by Milap Zaveri and Tushar Hiranandani.
For anyone who ever watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and was disappointed that, for all its over-the-top absurdities, it didn't feature a scene where Harrison Ford punches a midget and makes him fly across a field, then Naksha is the movie for you. Only it's not Harrison ford doing the punching; it's action cinema mainstay Sonny Deol. But hell, if anyone in the world is going to punch a midget and make him fly across a field, then it's going to be Sonny. Jackie Chan may have tried it at some point, but he's past the days of being able to do that anymore -- although he is an appropriate actor to bring up in our discussion of this movie, as although Naksha gets compared to Raiders of the Lost Ark (because all adventure films get compared to Raiders), the films it more accurately resembles would be the modern-setting adventure films of the late, great Cannon Studios, like Treasure of the Four Crowns or that thing where Chuck Norris and Lou Gossett, Jr. bicker and hunt for gold or whatever; or, perhaps even more closely, Naksha resembles the globe-trotting adventure antics of Hong Kong adventure films like Jackie Chan's two superb Armor of God films and Michelle Yeoh's entertaining but fabulously awful The Touch. In fact, if you took the armor from Armor of God (although, technically, we never even see the armor, do we?) and plopped it into the finale of The Touch, with a dollop of The Rundown thrown in for good measure, you'd basically have Naksha, the tale of two brothers and a tag-along hot chick who traverse the mountainous jungle wilderness in search of a secret temple and a sacred relic that could turn villain Jackie Shroff into an invincible superman, instead of turning him into the twin of French actor Jean Reno, which seems to be nature's own plan for Shroff.
Pretty boy Viveik Oberoi stars as Vicky, a fun-loving goofball who likes to spend his night at sexy dance clubs where the singers implore you to "shake what your momma gave you," even though poorly proofread subtitles insist that they are saying "shake what your momma told you" (and this after they tell is the lyrics to "Sway are "when the rubber rhythm starts to play"). I generally don't pick on subtitles, especially on DVDs that are marketed to a population that speaks something other than English. The inclusion of English subs is a nice consideration for the rest of us, and so I don't really complain when things stray from precise grammar. But still, man -- you should at least be able to properly subtitle in English the lines that are actually delivered in English. I only say this because I was all into shaking what my momma gave me, but then if I am only able to shake what my momma told me, I'm not gong to be allowed to shake anything other than Shake and Bake -- and going to a sexy dance club to shake a bag of raw chicken and crumblings is not what I'd consider getting my money's worth.
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