Shool
Director: Eeshawar Nivas
Year: 1999
Duration: 138 minutes
Music: Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy
Rating: 6.0
Trans: Spike
Only a few minutes into this Bollywood film,
it began to feel very familiar and then I realized that I had seen it a few
weeks ago. Ok, not this film - I am not that forgetful yet - but a Hong Kong
film titled Tian Di from 1994 starring Andy Lau. Now I doubt that Ram Gopal
Varma who wrote this script had seen that film - Varma is one of the geniuses
of the Indian film industry - but it is an interesting coincidence. In both
films an honest implacable police officer is assigned to a new town where
everyone is corrupt. One dirty politician/gangster runs the town and if you
get out of line, he will come down on you no matter that you are a policeman.
The entire police department is on the take and don't even hide it. Tian
Di had some terrific over the top action set-pieces which is what made that
enjoyable. This does not. But it has a few musical numbers which is almost
the same thing. They both even begin with the policeman and his family getting
off at the train station and immediately running into a small corrupt act.
Ok - maybe Varma did see Tian Di.
What is interesting about the film is that
both the hero and villain are psychopaths but in different ways. I am not
sure that was the director Eeshwar Nivas's intention but Inspector Samar's
relentless absolute refusal to bend an inch doesn't come across as so much
heroic as foolish. Samar is played by Manoj Bajpayee with a ferocity that
is fairly one-note - angry and principled. The antagonist is given much more
of a personality - as psychotic as it his. He loves singing Bollywood tunes
for one thing on numerous occasions. In one instance, after he has had his
men stab a rival politician he thinks he is still alive and tells them, stab
him again in the heart. When he does, Yadav (Sayaji Shinde) yells at him
- no, the heart is here like when Madhuri Dixit touches hers in the song
Dhak Dhak. Showing he isn't such a bad guy though, he tells his men to bury
him but plant a Peepul tree on top of it. The Peepul tree has a religious
significance. Later he leads his men in a chorus of Chama Chama from China
Gate.
Samar learns right away who runs the town
when his own police staff tells him, don't screw with Yadav. He owns everything
including us. And we aren't ashamed with that. He gives us all salary. If
you leave him alone, he will leave you alone. Samar needless to say refuses
to take their advice or there would not be much of a movie. But it is small
stuff that he does - he arrests two of Yadav's men for assault - of course
they get off, he forces Yadav to end his party because he didn't get a permit
for the loud speakers. He won't back off but he doesn't go after Yadav for
anything worth his time. And also, needless to say he endangers his wife
(Raveena Tandon) and adorable small daughter (who sings the first number,
which translates to something like Papa don't get angry). Don't they always
eventually go after the family in films like this.
A few hard smack down fights between him
and thugs but nothing that approaches an action set-piece. Yadav is holding
all the cards and Samar refuses to recognize this. The ending is both corny,
intense and patriotic as he does a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington moment but
with a gun pointed at the head of Yadav. This was a big hit and won all sorts
of awards back in 1999. The film still holds its place for Indians as can
be seen by the highly rated reviews here on Letterbox. It has the subtlety
of a bulldozer and I found myself liking the villain more than the cop which
I definitely was not supposed to. A good Item Number from Shilpa Shetty was
welcome.
