Movie Review : Agneepath
Friday, January 27, 2012 3:31:38 PM (IST)
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Anaam, Bollywood Trade Editorial
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HRITHIK ROSHAN and PRIYANKA CHOPRA in AGNEEPATH
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It is a visually and aurally rich but viscerally poor action/crime/revenge drama. The filmmaker overwhelms us with evil characters, dark sets, high-octane song and dance numbers, and an unrelenting background chorus. The role of Vijay Dinananth Chauhan is diminished and debased beyond recognition in the brand new stylistic interpretation of the old story. In this dramatic high-pitched deluge the filmmaker loses track of the strong central premise of the original film that could have raised his work to a level of an all time classic within the framework of a money-spinning Bollywood blockbuster.
He can do it next time, learning from his mistakes, by reading film reviews like this, and by developing a fuller and deeper understanding of the storytelling process as he matures mentally and develops the capacity to look at his work more objectively if he somehow retains his yearning to improve and excel in spite of the huge box office success of his first film.
For a débutante, Karan Malhotra has done a good enough job in his graduation film. He has employed all the available resources at his command as best as his understanding of the Bollywood cinema and the genealogical influences of his mentor and mai-baap Karan Johar could permit. He sets out to deliver an opulent Bollywood style tale, and succeeds largely by extracting the best out of his competent and experienced team of technicians and senior thesps.
The opportunity to remake a film like AGNEEPATH is a precious one. It can be an easy as well as a dicey affair. It is easy because you already have a premise, a story and a film. You can see the flaws in the original, technical as well as ideational, and correct them and re-create a well-integrated film. It gets dicey when your own subjectivity creeps into the picture. It is natural, normal, and can be useful as well at times if it does not tend to get obsessive. Karan Malhotra has fallen prey to his debilitating obsessiveness and his penchant for over-dramatic visualisation is further abetted by his production designer Sabu Cyril’s deep-seated desire to do a dark Dracula film.
The original film was about Vijay Dinananth Chauhan and his fight for revenge against a wily Nepali gangster and smuggler Kancha Cheena. The new film is about a bald-headed philosophising menacing hulk in black dress, the personification of evil, and Mandwa’s uncrowned king and drug cultivator Kancha Cheena (Sanjay Dutt) and another heartless cutthroat Mumbai gangster from Dongri Rauf Lala (Rishi Kapoor) who rules the underworld of drugs, prostitution, and human trafficking. This alters the terrain of the film completely and turns Vijay Dinanath Chauhan (Hrithik Roshan) into an essential adjunct, an interlude, and a pygmy between the two menacing and marauding giants.
The multi layered central character of the original is turned uni-dimensional in the remake. The director is so much in love with his evil creations that he ignores his protagonist, provides no room to develop his relationships to underline his lonely and fatalistic inward and outward journey. The death of this Vijay Dinanath Chauhan serves no purpose. It simply subjects the audience to a tortuous anti-climactic climax, the worst ever of a film of this genre in the recent history. The Vijay Dinannath Chauhan of the yore had death written on his forehead. That was a classic touch. Karan Malhotra is unfamiliar with such nuances. One hopes he grows up and develops the ability to separate rice from husk. He will then be able to appreciate the missing critical and essential characters and elements of the original in his dramatic remake.
The director, the production designer, the DOP, the editor, and the rest of the technical team won’t agree with this assessment though. They have demonstrated their skills in ample measures. What else do you want and expect? Should we not applaud their achievement? Of course, we should. They have done all right by their own mediocre standards. Congratulations. Go ahead, and celebrate, throw ‘the 100 crores in four days’ party.
Everything works in the film but in bits and pieces. Rishi Kapoor, Sanjay Dutt, and Katrina Kaif dwarf every other character in the film. Hrithik Roshan gets a raw deal as a hero yet performs the task as best as he can with very little help from the film’s screenplay. Priyanka Chopra and the rest of the cast do justice to their bit roles as well. It is the script that pulls the film down.
We give four stars to the film - one for the good work done by the technical crew, one for its music, one for Rishi Kapoor and Sanjay Dutt, and one for the film being the debut of the director.
Rating - 4/5
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