Yakeen
Director: Brij
Music: Jaikishan/Shankar
Year: 1969
Rating: 8/10
Length: 138 minutes
This is a pretty
terrific Bollywood film starring Dharmendra, Sharmila Tagore and Helen in
a cameo dance number. Throw in the music of Shankar-Jaikishan and the playback
voices of Lata, Asha and M. Rafi and you know the chances are it will have
some pizzazz. It was in fact a big box office hit in 1969 and helped solidify
Dharmendra as a star.
It has what you expect from a good Bollywood
film - great music, big stars, comedy (though amazingly the comedy relief
is killed - something I often want to do myself in Bollywood films! But this
guy was actually funny), action, suspense, a wet sari dance number, Helen
rocking the house and so on. Dharmendra is a scientist at a top secret laboratory
on the verge of inventing something amazing that will Make India Great Again
- we never find out what that is exactly - otherwise they would have to kill
us - and another country wants to get it.
They come up with an elaborate plan to
frame Dharmendra for murder, kidnap him and take him to Mozambique of all
places and substitute him with a lookalike who will blow up the lab. So a
double role for Dharmendra - one of those Bollywood things that they loved
doing lot of whether separated twins at birth or amazing coincidence (Don)
or one like this. Once you get past the first 30 minutes of romantic intertwining
with three songs, it takes off and never slows down.
