"Your family line will end with your name. There
will be no one to burn your dead body."
Ouch. This Bollywood film feels rather crudely made with some dreadfully
placed songs and absurd action that just adds to the overall sense of sordidness,
cheapness and distaste. But for a Bollywood film in the 1980's it is kind
of shocking and liberating. It stars a huge name in the business - Dimple
Kapadia - but nearly everyone else looks to have been found in a drunk tank
at midnight. A lot of very creepy men. Who get what is coming to them. Dimple
became an overnight star with the film Bobby in 1973 after she was discovered
by Raj Kapoor. It is a wonderful teenage romance and she is adorable x 5 in
it. She was 15 at the time. She then married Rajesh Khanna who was fifteen
years older and a major star at the time. Maybe the biggest before his star
fell. And she retired from films as was expected back then. Over the years
her legend and popularity from that one film just grew. And then they got
divorced - the dream marriage of a fifteen-year-old marrying a much older
man was over and she went back to acting in 1984 and still is and gained a
reputation as one of the best actresses in Hindi films. She is terrific in
this and pulls it out of the gutter to make it worth watching. Times have
changed of course and this would not raise an eyebrow in today's cinema but
32 years ago, yup.
Kirin Dutt (Dimple) is a tough female cop who can go into a small restaurant
- see nothing unusual but when she notices her coffee is full of sugar she
goes back in and shoots a couple bad guys and beats up the rest with a few
karate chops and kicks. Perhaps not co-incidentally I noticed that My Lucky
Stars was playing at the cinema. Probably where she learned it. Next, she
stops a man who is raping a woman in his car and arrests him. Now for
Indian justice right? Not exactly. The rapist's lawyer (Anupam Kher) gets
him off by providing a hotel register from another city with his name in it.
The judge rules for him to go free because he could not have done it being
in another city. What the hell! Kirin arrested him. He was in jail. A little
hard to believe it is that bad but the law (according to this film) is that
to prove rape, you need a witness besides the victim. Which most rapists
make sure is not the case.
Next of course Kirin is raped by four men who should all be in the Cretin
Hall of Fame. The scene got lambasted as tawdry back then - again today it
is not much - just the look of pain and horror on her face. Again, the court
throws it out through a false witness. But she isn't about to leave it there.
She forms a group of wronged women - either raped or a family member raped
- and they decide that it is up to them to administer justice. Not killing
them which would have been my choice - but to have the doctor among them castrate
them. What they did with the evidence I am not sure. They drug them, take
them to surgery, decapitate their testicles and dump them. Lots of them. A
lot of men running around Bombay without their equipment. One of them is about
to get married and the prospective father-in-law demands to see his gonads.
Which have gone missing.
There are a few ok songs - but weirdly placed. One while they are removing
someone's manhood, another when a wife is trying to seduce her husband who
has been too ashamed to admit he can no longer perform and one (Aruna Irani)
of the women in this cabal trying to put off being raped by breaking into
song and dance. Not exactly Sherezade but close. The good news is that rapes
went way down. If not for Dimple, you would think this was a B film playing
the provinces to audiences of men. It is that age old question - is it Girl
Power or exploitation. Up to people to decide but it was a hit back then.
