Zanjeer (Chain)
Reviewed by Simon Booth
Director: Prakash Mehra
Music: Kalyanji/Anandji
Year: 1973
Running Time: 2 hours 24 minutes
As a child, Vijay witnesses the murder of
his parents by their unscrupulous employer, worried that pops will spill
the beans on his "spurious injections" business. As luck would have it, Vijay
was hidden in a wardrobe at the time and all he sees of the killer is his
golden chain, with a cute little plastic horse dangling from it.
Twenty years later, Vijay has morphed into Amitabh Bachchan and is a police
officer, always in trouble with his superiors because of his tendency to
take crime as a personal affront and use any means available to punish its
perpetrators. He's a very serious and intense young man, haunted by nightmares
of his parent’s murder.
Prior to 1973, the name Amitabh Bachchan was not revered amongst Indian cinema
goers as it has been ever since. Indeed, Amitabh was considered to be box
office poison at the time, and director Prakash Mehra was thought to have
gone mad for choosing him as the star in his new film Zanjeer. History appears
to be on Mehra's side, for Zanjeer was a resounding success and
created the "Angry Young Man" image for Amitabh Bachchan that dominated Indian
cinema for the next decade.
Zanjeer follows the same pattern as many of Amitabh's films - or rather,
many of his films follow the pattern of Zanjeer, I guess. Amitabh has proven
himself a very versatile actor, but it is the driven intensity he brings
to roles such as this that made him Bollywood's undisputed king. Driven
by a rage he cannot release, he tears up the screen and the bad guys but
remains vulnerable and easy to empathise with. Bachchan is joined by some
interesting characters - the larger than life good-bad guy Tiger played by
Pran, and the sassy gypsy girl played by Jaya Bhaduri, who was
Bachchan's love interest and later his real-life wife. Unfortunately the
bad-bad (Ajit) guy is less charismatic and interesting than he might have
been - he is cold and cruel, but not as "villainous" as he might have been.
I don't know just how original Zanjeer was at the time of its release...
it seems to follow a pretty conventional formula, but the impression I get
is that it largely created this formula. Perhaps similar plots were covered
before, but I can't imagine anybody filling such a role as well as Amitabh.
Certainly Zanjeer was a runaway success, and a profoundly influential film.
Sadly, in this case 'first' does not mean 'best'. Although it's certainly
a solid film, it's not as well scripted as other films along similar lines,
and Amitabh doesn't have the cocky confidence that he would quickly develop
and employ so effectively in his numerous star roles. I guess everybody
involved was still finding their feet a little, so it's not surprising that
the elements presented here would be improved on in later films. The conclusion
I draw is that ZANJEER is not the best starting point on an Amitabh adulation
path, but is definitely worth picking up once such a path has been a little
trodden in.
My enjoyment of the film was doubtless hampered somewhat by the DVD presentation,
which is clearly heavily cropped - most obviously at the bottom of the screen,
where a good 20% must be missing. This was probably done to get rid of subtitles
burnt into the print used for mastering, but unfortunately you lose a lot
along with the subs - people's mouths during close-ups, for instance. I think
it was also cropped at the sides, possibly to preserve aspect ratio. It may
even have been a 4:3 film originally though, cropped to more than 1.85:1.
Whilst this cropping (and general print wear and tear) does not ruin the
film, it's definitely an impediment to full appreciation.