This felt long even for
a Bollywood film. At over 3 hours I think certain species were born, lived
and died while this film played. It is an over-the-top buffet of Masala.
In Bollywood, films are referred to as Masala when they bring in everything
that the audience would want. In this case there was an absurd amount of
melodrama, coincidences that were so ridiculous they should have been arrested
for indecency, lots of clobbering, some intense monologues, romance, a surprising
amount of unseen unmarried sex and of course music. The music from Kalyanji–Anandji
is pretty terrific with a couple big hits and one of the song picturization's
is worth the price of admission. The rest of it is at times effective, at
times if I had four eye-balls they would all have been rolling like a slot
machine. Part of my indifference to the film is that I expected fireworks.
If you put a cobra and a mongoose into a cage, you have expectations of a
battle of good and evil. Here they do that but it lands with a pat on the
back. Amitabh Bachchan and Amjad Khan were natural enemies like the cobra
and the mongoose in a number of films (Sholay being the most famous) and
you just wait for them to attack each other, outwit each other, stab each
other in the back. Here I kept waiting. And waiting. I still am.
Amjad is Ranveer Singh, a wealthy playboy but initially he doesn't seem too
bad as he promises his sister that he will find her a husband. He appears
to be in love with a popular singer, Vidya (Raakhee) until she springs the
happy news on him - I am pregnant! What do you want, a boy or a girl? An
abortion he replies. She refuses and goes off to have the baby on her own.
She dies in childbirth but our hero enters the film - Heera (diamond in Hindi)
- as an illegitimate child. Singh has his lawyer get rid of it - by giving
it to his alcoholic driver and telling him to put it on the tracks. He doesn't.
Instead, he takes him as his own son. And stays drunk for the rest of the
film.
As Heera grows up as a boy he takes odd jobs in restaurants and homes as
a servant. One such home is coincidentally the house of the lawyer who has
a young daughter. She gives a book to Heera to read. Heera grows up tough,
bitter and ready to use his fists - and dance a jig as he does in a nice
nightclub number. One of the other patrons, Mahendra (Ranjeet) offers him
a job in Kashmir and he accepts. Mahendra is a total spoiled rotter and wait
for it - the son of Singh. Meaning they are half-brothers. The coincidences
are beginning to pile up. Soon they will be suffocating you like a fat man
fell on you. Heera meets Singh - they hit it off - what - they have to become
enemies - but it appears Singh has reformed and is now a benefactor of the
poor and of orphanages. It must be a front though, right?
Heera comes across a privileged woman full of airs and of course stalks her
to show his affection. Mohini is played by Zeenat Aman and guess what? She
is the young girl who gave him the book. Stop! Enough already. When she finds
out who he is, the two of them go on one of those Bollywood dances in the
countryside. Some drama comes in when Mahendra tries to kill Heera and there
is a lot of fisticuffs with an insane final 20 minutes that was totally nuts.
But the highlight of the film for me was Amitabh singing - in his own voice
- Mere Angne Mein - at a birthday party in drag. And pokes fun at Bollywood
heroines in dances by changing his outfit about five times in the number.
Amitabh can do everything. This is the sort of film that Westerners would
watch and swear never to watch another Bollywood film. Coincidences or call
it fate often play a large role in their films and often it really pops you
one with emotion but this was just silly. But some of the dialogue is terrific
and Amitabh who was called the Angry Young Man during the 1970s for his social
inequality films is still pissed off going into the 80s. The film was a big
hit though back in 1981. A lot of star power. Directed by Prakash Mehra (Zanjeer
and a number of other films with Amitabh).
