Fasten your seat belts, Ladies and Gentlemen: you’re in for a fantastic ride with this remake of a movie. What you’ll get is a classic Bollywood masala movie, no holds barred. And what that means is that we get everything from stereotypical Indian village life–where the school master sets the moral tone to the simple living of the simple village folks– that is in stark contrast to the goondas and gangsters of the metropolis across the bay, also known as Mumbai. And in this big-city, we see the sinister machinations of mafia gangs, but also the intricacies of love, loyalty, and Machiavellian politics flourish in gay abandon.
In the midst of this all, we follow the life of a young boy determined to match the grief of loss with an insatiable thirst for revenge, and perhaps relief? Alas, if only there was some surety of the latter being a function of the former we’d all be so much secure in our ways. But ours is not the privilege to predict the future, and very often we are perplexed even about the present. Which is a sentiment that is portrayed so very skillfully in the mother-son relationship in this story.
The cast of characters is superb. But before I get to that, allow me to confess that I don’t remember having seen the original Agneepath, and only after taking in this one did I hop on to YouTube to check it out. Suffice to say, the story might be the same, but at the risk of stepping on the toes of die-hard fans of the first, I would venture to say that this one breathed new life into the old. The portrayal of the primary characters was superb by each one: Rishi Kapoor would have been on fire sans the surma, I’m sure of it, and Sanjay Dutt was definitely made for this role. Om Puri, Danny Dengzongpa and Zarina Wahab give strong performances, and Ms. Chopra has a liveliness to her that is positively contagious, I think. But the one that takes the high marks is without a doubt, Mr. Hritik Roshan. A most brilliant performance that is seamless in his many facets of son, lover, and right-hand man, Hritik’s Vijay Dinanath Chauhan is one for the files, hands down.
The musical score also deserves commendation for its intense background music, and of course, the much-talked and very duly-hyped Chikni Chameli song. The cameo by Katrina Kaif adds that extra zing to the ‘masala’ and certainly earns her an even higher spot in the ranks of Bollywood’s hot actresses.
True to form, this is bound to be a Bollywood blockbuster, if it isn’t one already. And please, for the last time, can we not complain about how long the movie is? It’s supposed to be long, don’t you see– they need every minute of those three-plus hours to put on this epic story.
Boris Pasternak 2/10/1890 – 5/30/1960 Russian Nobel Prize-winning novelist/poet.
