It’s impossible to take seriously a hero who’s groomed as perfectly as Ram Charan is in Apoorva Lakhia’s remake of Zanjeer. The super-buff, gym-toned physique is probably the least of the problems. God forbid we catch sight of a thatch of chest hair or the hint of love handles, even given the punishing schedules of police officers. (Ram Charan plays ACP Vijay Khanna.) But this grooming extends to a meticulously sculpted stubble and teeth that are so dazzling, so white, so uniform that you half expect him to blow into a cupped palm and turn towards you with a thumbs up. And that hair. It’s been teased into a quiff, and not a strand slips, not even when he’s moving faster than the wind, flattening hapless opponents. And he smolders like a model, the lower half of his face tapering into a perfect triangle. There’s not a line on that face, not when he’s happy, not when he’s sad, not when he’s playing (gulp) videogames with his BFF Sher Khan (Sanjay Dutt).
None of this would matter in a trifling rom-com, where a good-looking hero can get away with just looking good. But this airbrushed aura is fatal in a red-blooded action film. This is not to say that the earlier Zanjeer is some sort of sacred classic. Like most films from an earlier era, it can stand some tweaking. The fights, for instance, look staged and silly, and they could benefit from today’s advances in tech-aided choreography. The Hindu-Muslim-Christian brotherhood (represented by Amitabh Bachchan’s Vijay, Pran’s Sher Khan, and Om Prakash’s D’Silva) is a charming 1970s conceit that would look a tad too cutesy in the more complex and fractured world we live in today. And the knife sharpener appears to have vanished off the face of the planet (along with the ten-paisa coin she collected per knife sharpened), and the heroine, today, needs to find something else to do. But the emotional beats are rock solid, and they need no improvement.
Lakhia, bafflingly, jettisons most of these emotions – though the barebones of the story is the same. (An orphaned Vijay settles scores with the man who killed his parents.) The earlier Zanjeer came in a more moral age, where actions had consequences. Vijay’s father was a crook who worked in a ring that manufactured adulterated medicine and alcohol, and his daughter died from this very medicine. So he turned good, and because no good deed goes unpunished, he ended up killed. In the remake, Vijay’s father is an utterly honest man – so there’s no divine-retribution drama. And because the adulteration is now with petrol and diesel, which burn a hole in the purse but don’t quite kill, there is no human-scale drama either. We no longer have the angle of the grieving father who seeks revenge because his sons brought home a bottle of (adulterated) booze on Christmas Eve and died soon after. These screenwriting decisions dragged the common man into the picture, and he’s lost in this abstract good-versus-evil tale that replaces grit with gloss.
We begin with a Bond-style opening credits number, and we end with something right out of an Indiana Jones movie, with the hero faced with water gushing into a tunnel. And though it’s a good idea to withhold the mystery behind Vijay’s recurring nightmares – the older film, narrated chronologically, laid this out for us at the beginning – the revelation, when it arrives, packs no punch. The sequence is stylised, like the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents in one of the Batman movies, and it registers more as cinematography than tragedy. (Other blatant inspirations include the baseball bat scene from The Untouchables, and the action sequence in the men’s rest room in True Lies.) Maybe Lakhia wanted to make a stylish action thriller – but why choose this material, which brings with it so many associations? Why invoke the earlier film with similarly named characters and with refrains from Bindu’s Dil jalon ka song worked into the number performed by the modern-day Mona Darling (poor Mahie Gill)? Why have the new Teja (Prakash Raj) watch a clip featuring Ajit, his villainous counterpart from the older film?
This has got to be one of Prakash Raj’s worst performances, but let’s not judge him too harshly. After all, look what he has to work with: blow-job jokes and clothes that appear to have survived an explosion at the paint factory. But his ineffectiveness is coolly eclipsed by that of Priyanka Chopra, whose heroine is a rich daddy’s girl from New York. She’s come down to India to attend the wedding of a… Facebook friend, and at this hallowed event, she thrusts her pelvis at the camera and belts out a song declaring that she belongs not to the people from Mumbai or Delhi but to those who have the most money. (I kept praying she’d find an excuse to skip the rest of the film, say, the golden anniversary celebrations of the parents of someone she just started following on Twitter. No such luck, alas.)
There’s a little thesis waiting to be written on heroines then and heroines now in hero-oriented cinema. The older Vijay was jailed on trumped-up charges. When released, his desire for a normal life with Mala made him decide to give up his quest for revenge. He even brokered a truce with Teja. But his innate need to fight the good fight kept rearing its head and it frustrated him (occasioning the film’s finest speech) and Mala, eventually, told him to go after Teja. She realised that Vijay could not be the man she wanted him to be unless he destroyed the villain who’d made him the man he had become. She made the decision as much for her sake as his. It’s too much to expect Priyanka Chopra’s Mala to do this much. (When she exhorts Vijay to go fight, it comes across as a petulant whim.) But she isn’t even allowed to be chased by the bad guys the way the heroine in the older film was. There was an element of danger in the older Mala crossing the train tracks, hiding in an empty coach and finding her way to Vijay’s house, seeking refuge. The new Mala conveniently runs into Vijay, mere seconds after the chase begins. Like many moments in this movie this one gives the feeling that, at some point, the entire unit just gave up, took the money and ran.
The most frustrating aspect of this Zanjeer is the cynicism on display, as if the audience would show up just because lines like “Yeh police station hai, tere baap ka ghar nahin” are reproduced. These lines were just seasoning. The meat came from Vijay’s core. All that analysis about the angry young man being birthed in Zanjeer was in a way short-sighted. That construct could be glimpsed in Sunil Dutt in Mother India, Dilip Kumar in Gunga Jumna, and even the Dilip Kumar of Mughal-e-Azam, who waged war with perhaps the greatest (and most unyielding) “establishment” of all: the Emperor. But those angry young men were from a more peaceful and poetic time (in the country as well as cinema), and the reason we acknowledge Bachchan as the angry young man is that he was the first hero who felt genuinely angry. His films felt violent – physically, verbally, emotionally – in a way those earlier films never did. The only anger in this Zanjeer comes from the audience.
Copyright ©2013 Baradwaj Rangan. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
Baradwaj Rangan 
Arun
September 7, 2013
Heh heh! This review had me in splits! That bit on ms.chopra was sublime. You really are at your wickedest when films anger you 😊
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Anuja
September 7, 2013
“It’s impossible to take seriously a hero who’s groomed as perfectly as Ram Charan is in Apoorva Lakhia’s remake of Zanjeer.”
True dat! These uber – groomed, metrosexual types always come across as too Narcissistic and you can’t imagine them caring about anything but their reflection on a handy mirror. Makes you wish that a fiendish creature emerges from it and drags them screaming into its fathomless depths as punishment for assaulting our senses with their preening and posturing onscreen. Hrithik Roshan, Shahid Kapoor, John Abraham beware!
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susruthanvesh
September 7, 2013
Reblogged this on .Writeffective. and commented:
Bharadwaj Rangan’s review of Zanjeer.
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MANK
September 7, 2013
Had great fun reading the review. Like somebody said the bad movies make the most interesting reviews. Also i liked the fact that you did not nostalgically muse about the old zanjeer either. It is true it wasn’t a great movie either. It was really another movie that was saved by the great charisma and talent of Bachchan. Really some actors definitely do make a diference
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Abhirup.
September 7, 2013
“The fights, for instance, look staged and silly, and they could benefit from today’s advances in tech-aided choreography.”
Really? I re-watched it recently, and, compared to the fight scenes in this remake–which look straight out of a terrible Tamil B-movie–the fights in the original ‘Zanjeer’ come off much better. The confrontation between Vijay and Sher Khan, for instance, looks like an actual street fight: if there’s some awkwardness in the movements of the two fighters, that’s because in actual fights, people do not always operate with the trained smoothness of the martial artists in Bruce Lee films. In contrast, for all the “tech-aided choreography” at its disposal, the same fight scene in the remake looks terrible. There’s no energy, no urgency in it. Indeed, one thing that amazes me about the best films of the 1970s is how much better those films fare in multiple departments despite the lack of the technological advances of today.
“The Hindu-Muslim-Christian brotherhood (represented by Amitabh Bachchan’s Vijay, Pran’s Sher Khan, and Om Prakash’s D’Silva) is a charming 1970s conceit that would look a tad too cutesy in the more complex and fractured world we live in today.”
Not necessarily. In the original film, the different religions of the three characters weren’t highlighted and emphasized; it was presented as part of the proceedings. So, there’s nothing forced about the message of religious harmony and unity (provided that we assume the film intended to convey such a message in the first place, because unlike, say, ‘Amar Akbar Anthony’, religion doesn’t play much of a role in this film). If a remake similarly presents the three characters from three different backgrounds without much fuss, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work. Yeah, we do live in a more fractured and complex world today. But that doesn’t mean we can’t show characters of different faiths working together. ‘Sarfarosh’ had a Hindu and a Muslim cop joining hands to fight terrorism, ‘Laagan’ had characters of various religions playing for the same team, and in ‘Rang De Basanti’, the group of friends had a Sikh, a Muslim, a Hindu hard-liner, and some other, more secular Hindus, whose moral transformation is forged while working with a white, Christian woman. And it worked. So why not in ‘Zanjeer’?
“And the knife sharpener appears to have vanished off the face of the planet”
Uh, not quite. At least, here in Kolkata, they still exist, and not in very small numbers either (I shall concede, though, that I don’t see too many female knife-sharpeners). I am not saying that a remake MUST make the heroine a follower of the same profession, but the profession of Mala in the earlier film hardly renders it dated.
As for whether the earlier ‘Zanjeer’ is a classic, well, each would have his own opinion; in mine, it is. It has the sort of hero not seen in Indian cinema before, played brilliantly by an actor who made this sort of role his own. It has Jaya Bachchan and Pran bringing spunk and suaveness to their roles of the love interest and the hero’s buddy. It has still very hummable ‘Yaari hain imaan mera’. It has a good degree of grit even within the commercial, potboiler framework. It has those grand dialogues. And the dialogues are part of a script that blends action, romance, suspense and morality drama expertly, providing entertainment in spades while also giving us issues to think about. What more can I ask for? ‘Zanjeer’, remains, in my opinion, one of the very best films made in the 1970s, and a true landmark in the history of Indian cinema, if only for birthing the Angry Young Man phenomenon.
Hilarious review, by the way. Can’t agree more with the rest of it.
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Anu Warrier
September 8, 2013
My initial reaction when I see another one of Amitabh’s films remade is to groan. Not because all his films were stellar classics, but because there is not an actor alive who has half his charisma and screen presence. Not to mention that those films were evocative of an age. So, Don, Agneepath, Zanjeer et al.
And now I hear they are ‘remaking’ Satte pe Satta with Sanjay Dutt! The mind boggles!
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Sam
September 8, 2013
How are the actions sequences in this? I thought the scale of it looked pretty impressive. Too bad to hear that the film is weak, though. I got that feeling from the teasers.
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Vidya
September 8, 2013
Read this review three times and laughed so hard each time! I used to buy Indian express a while back only for your reviews Mr Rangan. Lovely ! I watched the trailer and thought this guy looks so much like Johnny bravo and this movie will be like a cartoon for sure. You dedicated a nice delightful paragraph to his looks , bravo!
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travellingslacker
September 8, 2013
Hilarious 😀
As for the action part, I kinda agree with Abhirup…. can’t stand the Dhoom 2 type of wannabe cool, slo-mo action… and similarly I can’t stand the unintentionally hilarious OTD action in the likes of Singham and RR…
For me the last great desi action film was Gadar…
And from the Big B era,.. I think Bollywood will never best these three sequences,
1. The Vijay-Sher Khan showdown in Zanjeer
2. The epic warehouse fight in Deewar
3. And the train sequence in Sholay…
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venkatesh
September 8, 2013
Did someone mention Johnny Bravo – perfect.
Other than rom-coms i want my heroes and my heroines more of this Earth , please. Thank You
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oneWithTheH
September 9, 2013
Opting for an allegedly iconic movie/character’s remake as an entry vehicle into hindi cinema is a very audacious choice I’d think. Don and Agneepath for example had established stars in their remakes which sort of makes sense because their own stardom can sometimes save those movies, mainly from making strict comparisons with the original. No, I am not saying they would not be compared at all but probably to a lesser extent because the actors have their own standing(and, well established at that) and you can watch them for what they’d bring in to these recreated roles. But with no earlier work in hindi cinema for back up, comparisons between the old and new are bound to be rigorous and unforgiving I think.
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brangan
September 9, 2013
Abhirup/travellingslacker: I agree that the Vijay-Sher Khan fight was scrappy and effective. But I was talking about the bathtub fight among other things. The fact that “this is how a fight would look like in real life” doesn’t necessarily mean I want to see the same thing on screen. Otherwise we needn’t have well-shaped and witty dialogues, for instance, because most of us don’t talk that way in real life. Some bit of colour is needed on screen, and I think action scenes like the one in “Lootera” would have made a big difference here (not the slo-mo action scenes).
About the brotherhood of religious, I wasn’t saying that there’s anything forced about it. Just that, as a masala-movie trope, that belongs to a certain era, where screenwriters consciously chose to weave in the fabric of the India around them. That’s a different thing from what something like RDB does, to make a very particular point. The fact that Sher Khan is retained here as the hero’s partner is enough to prove that this is something like “Sarfarosh.”
Sam: There was one SUV-aided demolition that looked good for the few seconds it lasted. The rest of the action is very ordinary.
oneWithTheH: Actually, I don’t think it’s all that audacious. Only critics and moviegoers of a certain age are going to look at these films with a then-versus-now comparison angle. Most people — especially youngsters, who make up the bulk of the movie-going population — just want an entertaining movie. This just wasn’t entertaining — that was its problem. And the guy just wasn’t hero material here. You need a certain aura to play a cop convincingly, and he just didn’t have it.
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Abhirup.
September 9, 2013
“The fact that “this is how a fight would look like in real life” doesn’t necessarily mean I want to see the same thing on screen. Otherwise we needn’t have well-shaped and witty dialogues, for instance, because most of us don’t talk that way in real life.”
I get your point, but I think in the 1970s films of Amitabh Bachchan, the fights were often, deliberately done without that “bit of colour” you are talking about, probably because the films of the earlier era, and even many other films of the 1970s, had fights that are too ‘colourful’. In contrast, the fight scenes in Bachchan’s films had a deliberate rootedness while still being ‘masala’ enough. I am talking not just about ‘Zanjeer’ here, but also about the warehouse fight in ‘Deewaar’, the beating up of the goons to make them evacuate a plot they have been illegally occupying in ‘Trishul’, the fight with Shatrughan Sinha in ‘Kaala Patthar’, and the ones in ‘Sholay’ and ‘Don’. The bathtub fight you mention didn’t come across as odd or anything to me, and even the two climactic fights are well-done in my opinion. As travellingslacker says, such fight sequences are preferable any day to the sort we usually get.
“Just that, as a masala-movie trope, that belongs to a certain era, where screenwriters consciously chose to weave in the fabric of the India around them. That’s a different thing from what something like RDB does, to make a very particular point.”
Could you explain the difference you are talking about? Because I would say that in ‘Rang De Basanti’ too, it is a weaving in of the fabric of contemporary society.
“The fact that Sher Khan is retained here as the hero’s partner is enough to prove that this is something like “Sarfarosh.””
Which is what I have been trying to say, too; that if a relatively recent film like ‘Sarfarosh’ can have the people-from-different-religions-coming-together-for-a-common-and-noble-cause trope and make it work, there’s no reason why a remake of ‘Zanjeer’ shouldn’t have it as well. The reasons why the Vijay-Sher Khan friendship here doesn’t affect us are the ineptness of the actors and the faulty writing, not the trope itself.
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Raj Balakrishnan
September 9, 2013
Priyanka Chopra is annoying both on screen and off it. Recently saw her interview on Sky tv where she was promoting her album. She had a fake accent and her over the top body language and mannerisms, trying to come across as a pop star, was ridiculous. She wished to collaborate with beyonce for a ‘power chic’ song, whatever the fu#k that is. What an annoying fake.
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MANK
September 9, 2013
But much of the fights in Early to mid 70’s movies were realistic ones. Say the fight between Dharmendra and vinod khanna in Mera gaon mera desh.. But the fight secenes in Don were very over the top keeping with the rather over the top theme of the movie. Everyone from AB and Zeenat aman indulging in flying somersaults in the climax.But the ‘off colour’ stunts in bachchan movies actually were limited to the ones in movies scripted by salim javed and directed by yash chopra or remesh sippy, Shakti being another one of those movies. Compare that with the over the top fight scenes in hera pheri ,muqaddar ka sikander,Amar akbar anthony, suhaag etc, you could see that off colour was not something that was Bachchan specific. The bathtub fight scene may or may not be odd but what BR should have mentioned was jaya bhaduri coming out of nowhere and displaying her knife throwing skills in the climax of Zanjeer ,that was truly an oddity.But the true odd thing about this Zanjeer was sanjay dutt’s appearance. I mean in the earlier version pran’s wigs and fake beard was acceptable keeping in with the unsophistication prevalent in hair and makeup departments at that time . But for sanjay dutt to look like that today, wonder what was the issue:Bad prosthetic,Facelift gone wrong , Botox Malfunction really, I was surprised that BR did not have a comment about that even as he was making so much fum of Ramcharan and PC.
Could you explain the difference you are talking about? Because I would say that in ‘Rang De Basanti’ too, it is a weaving in of the fabric of contemporary society.
Well i believe that RDB spoke to generation in the post 9/11 , pak sponsored terrorism environment . So it sort of becomes the compulsion of the filmmaker to weave in that kind of secular fabric particularly with the nature of the film he is making which had ideas of national integration and Indian independence struggle at its core,which was not the case with the earlier Zanjeer and also the socio political environment was very different then compared to what is it today. Which is the case of sarfarosh as well where the Muslim cop is always questioned about his genuineness and his loyalty.
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Abhirup.
September 9, 2013
“But the ‘off colour’ stunts in bachchan movies actually were limited to the ones in movies scripted by salim javed and directed by yash chopra or remesh sippy, Shakti being another one of those movies. Compare that with the over the top fight scenes in hera pheri ,muqaddar ka sikander,Amar akbar anthony, suhaag etc, you could see that off colour was not something that was Bachchan specific.”
I agree. Indeed, the Bachchan films that weren’t scripted by Salim-Javed did have the more “over-the-top” kind of action scenes (not that that is a problem, because in films like ‘Amar Akbar Anthony’, the over-the-top nature of the fights is in keeping with the overall tone of the film). What I was trying to say is that I am not quite okay with Mr. Rangan’s observation about the fight scenes in the original ‘Zanjeer’ needing modern technology to give it a lift, because the ‘colourless’ nature of those fights actually set the film, and others with similarly done fight scenes, apart from the prevalent method of staging fights at that period in Bollywood’s history.
“But the fight secenes in Don were very over the top keeping with the rather over the top theme of the movie. Everyone from AB and Zeenat aman indulging in flying somersaults in the climax.”
The somersaults in the climactic fight were the ONLY instance of over-the-top action scenes in ‘Don’. The other fights look much more real to me.
“what BR should have mentioned was jaya bhaduri coming out of nowhere and displaying her knife throwing skills in the climax of Zanjeer ,that was truly an oddity.”
Given that her character was never really a damsel-in-distress to begin with, her participation in the climactic conflict didn’t bother me at all; she does come across as the sort of woman who would take part in her lover’s battle rather than sit at home and pray for his well-being.
As for what you have said about ‘Rang De Basanti’ and ‘Sarfarosh’, that is precisely what I said too; that the ideas of religious harmony and brotherhood in these films, and the ones in ‘Zanjeer’, are both reflections of the social fabric of the respective periods when these films were/are made. True, in the era of ‘Zanjeer’, the “Hindu-Muslim bhai bhai” theme could be expressed more forthrightly, and that’s what it did; today, the suspicion cast upon Muslims, which we see in ‘Sarfarosh’, have to be taken into account. Even in ‘Rang De Basanti’, there’s the initial hostility between Atul Kulkarni’s Hindu hardliner and Kunal Kapoor’s Muslim youth. But both of the two latter films manage to paint a convincing portrait of people from different religions joining hands, without ignoring the fact that tensions exist between the people of the various communities. So, contrary to what Mr. Rangan says, I don’t think inter-religious friendship of the Vijay-Sher Khan sort would be odd or outdated in films made today.
By the way, Mr. Rangan, I too would like to hear what you have to say about Sanjay Dutt in this film.
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brangan
September 11, 2013
Abhirup: I guess I differ in my estimation of those fights. The Bachchan era fights don’t look all that different to me from the earlier era, because for one, the films of the earlier era (say the ones with Shammi, Rajesh Khanna, or even Raj-Dilip-Dev) didn’t have all that many fights. So these were among the first serious “action” films we had, and the action scenes don’t seem all that convincing to me. I find something like the “Lootera” scene more “realistic.” And yes, I did find it funny when Jaya Bhaduri turned up out of nowhere with a couple of knives (and this, after she’s given up that life and taken to wearing a sari and being some sort of wife).
About the RDB point, what I meant was that that film is deliberately constructed to make a larger point — so the warp/weft of Indian society, the cross-section, is integral to the storytelling, which is about the “nation” and all that. Whereas in these other films, it’s simply a reflection of the society around. Small difference there.
I’m not saying that this would be “outdated” in the new “Zanjeer” Just that it may come off somewhat forced.
Raj Balakrishnan: I find PC very annoying in this “perky girl” mode. It’s funny she’s so bad at this, because she’s a pretty decent actress otherwise. I mean, she does tougher roles well, and this you think should be a cakewalk. But she’s disastrous. Very strange.
MANK: I guess I did not mention Sanjay Dutt because he was the least annoying thing about the film. He didn’t come off ridiculous, and that — in this film — is no small achievement.
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UPN EarnesTaster
September 11, 2013
You are in top form here, right from the opening paragraph description, to the Facebook-ending-in-Twitter jab, to the referencing and analysis of the template film all the way through to the finisher about displacement of anger. Did you watch the original Zanjeer recently or all your points from memory? What spin do you think the Mahesh Bhatt stable would have put on this film? I’m awaiting your article on the special & unique contribution of the Mahesh Bhatt gharaana (which you mentioned in one of the previous articles here) to the industry.
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Abhirup.
September 11, 2013
“I guess I differ in my estimation of those fights.”
No problem. But I do think that something like the warehouse fight in ‘Deewaar’ and the Vijay-Sher Khan fight in the original ‘Zanjeer’ has little to benefit from modern technology. Just my view. And since you have mentioned ‘Lootera’ twice, I would like to point out that the scene in that film which you are referring to, and which I loved as well, has more shootouts than hand-to-hand combat, and so, the manner and logistics of that is not exactly going to be the same as that of the fights in Bachchan’s films, which were more about battling in close quarters with bare hands. The two are not really comparable. In their own way, those earlier films’ action scenes are effective enough.
“And yes, I did find it funny when Jaya Bhaduri turned up out of nowhere with a couple of knives (and this, after she’s given up that life and taken to wearing a sari and being some sort of wife).”
But it’s refreshing, isn’t it, that here, wearing a sari is not equated with going tamer and more submissive? That a heroine can give up her life on the streets to be with the man she loves, but that doesn’t mean she is going to be hiding behind him and letting him do all the fighting? You said here that she encourages Vijay to go fight the good fight as much for his sake as hers. It’s only logical that she would find it kind of imperative to accompany him (secretly, of course, because he would never have allowed her to come along if she had asked), also as much for his sake and her own, to ensure that what SHE has asked him to do doesn’t result in his death.
“I’m not saying that this would be “outdated” in the new “Zanjeer” Just that it may come off somewhat forced.”
Not with good writing, in my opinion.
Anyway, I must add that I have enjoyed this conversation immensely. This is what I come to your blog for; I hope I have not been too pesky.
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Raj Balakrishnan
September 11, 2013
Baradwaj, most Indian actresses are annoying when they do the perky girl act – the worst being Anushka Sharma and the ones in Tamil and Telugu films. One glorious exception being preity zinta in dil se, probably due to the director.
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MANK
September 11, 2013
Abhirup: the question is not about sari making her tame, it is just her entire body language when she does the knife throwing as well as the way it is edited into the movie that look like something out of a Chaplin movie particularly in the middle of that intense climax you know, bachchan realizing the murderer of his parents and exploding. Also if you see the movie you will see that there was no way she could have followed him and found out his location. It is just the directors concoction so that we have everybody together at the end. They could end the movie there with both of them walking hand in hand with Pran by their side. You really have a big heart to credit all that to women empowerment.
And again as we come back to the fights, I believe that the fights in Zanjeer and deewar are keeping with the mood and tone of the film and no modern technology is going to improve them. As for realistic fight scenes, one should watch maniratnam films to see them well done except may be Raavan where he has given in to the matrix style flying stunts. Otherwise even in Dalapati a Rajni film the stunts are very realistic and does not seem over the top. By the by the stunt sequences in Mani ratnam films are the least discussed aspect of his films and i think which really merits discussion. I believe that the climactic train sequence in tiruda tiruda are better than that in Sholay and like i mentioned above in spite of TT being an over the top adventure, the hand to hand combat scenes are very realistic. I would like to know from B whether the subject of conceiving and shooting of action scenes come across in his conversations with Mani ratnam AND WHAT ARE HIS VIEWS ABOUT THEM
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Rahul
September 12, 2013
Apparently , you are also from the Alistair Maclean generation. How about a column on him?
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Rajesh
September 12, 2013
Sir, Your review for Arya-Surya – I am waiting 😀
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Abhirup.
September 12, 2013
“the question is not about sari making her tame, it is just her entire body language when she does the knife throwing”
And the body language is objectionable/ wrong how, exactly?
“the way it is edited into the movie that look like something out of a Chaplin movie particularly in the middle of that intense climax you know, bachchan realizing the murderer of his parents and exploding.”
The appearance of Jaya Bachchan doesn’t come in the middle of Vijay’s realization that Teja is his parents’ killer. It comes much later, when Vijay and Sher Khan are fighting Teja and his men. So, I don’t think her presence lessens the intensity in any way.
“Also if you see the movie you will see that there was no way she could have followed him and found out his location.”
People in Hindi films are capable of feats far more impossible, so this bit never bothered me. If all I want from films is hardcore logic, I shouldn’t be watching films at all.
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