Friday Releases – 3^rd Feb’12

I’m beginning with a series where I’ll express my opinion / expectation on the Friday releases as a movie goer.

Let’s take a quick look at last week’s release – Agneepath.

Last week’s release has emerged a big grosser & first certified hit of the year. It has collected approx. 81 Cr. net domestically in seven days* and is on its way to become the next member of 100 Cr. club over the second weekend; though it needs to be seen how far it goes further.

Positives working in favor of new Agneepath are many the biggest amongst them was undoubtedly the brand name – Agneepath – by any other name this movie at its current running time and the dragging later part may not have been this big a success.

Other positive is the performance by the stellar star cast of Mr.Rishi Kapoor, Mr. Sanjay Dutt, Hritik Roshan, Priyanka Chopra, Om Puri, Zarina Wahab and rest of the supporting cast.

The menace of Rauf lala (played by Mr. Rishi Kapoor) makes the screen crackle; for me the dark shade of the character is best highlighted at the moment when the tables have turned and Vijay Chavan gets better of Rauf lala, the later still doesn’t hesitate in passing a comment on the former’s sister – agar bete ka maatam nahi hota to bistar pe dal deta isko – hats off to Mr. Rishi Kapoor for playing the role with such aplomb.

The character of Kancha Cheena (played by Mr.Dutt) got a major support by the appearance, get-up, setting & background score; and turned out to be our own version of Voldemort.

It’s an established fact that Hritik Roshan is a good actor, here again he conveys the pain and anguish of Vijay Chavan well through his eye and portrays the character in his own way. Hritik underplayed the character as per the requirement of the role, but in the process gets overshadowed by the towering characters of Rauf Lala & Kancha Cheena.

Chikni Chameli, Katrina, acts as the icing on the cake.

At the same time movie has its own share of flaws - in fact, one of the major flaw is the same as was with the original – the songs.

Director & writers cleverly stayed away from the cult sequences of the original or used them with a twist of their own; but wherever original sequences are used the comparison becomes inevitable where Hritik doesn’t exactly match up to the national award winning performance of Mr.Amitabh Bacchan. I missed the silent aggression and raw anger of Mr.Bacchan. That’s the drawback of making remakes no matter how well you do you can’t escape comparison.

The den of Kancha Cheena and his mannerism, at certain place, remind of the den and the character of Khooka (played by Mr.Mohan Agashe) from Trimurti, another movie of Late Mr. Mukul S.Anand, director of the original.

The song and the romantic track post the death of Rauf lala acts as a speed breaker to the whole proceedings and take movie’s graph lower. In the process climax seems hurried and fails to take the proceedings to the crescendo.

Surprisingly as a major player in Mumbai’s underworld Vijay Chavan appears like a sole-operator most of the times.

Dialogues of original written by Mr.Kadar Khan are sorely missed.

Director Karan Malhotra has done a commendable job of picking up a cult classic and interpreting it in a fresh manner, making it worth a watch. I’d wait for his next outing; hoping it would again be high on drama & entertainment.

Trivia - Though as is being generally speculated that it’s Mr. Kapoor first negative character….he played another interesting negative character in Ramsay brother’s movie Khoj.

by Gagan