Agneepath Movie Review

Review By Bobby Sing,

	A fine lengthy attempt but not a Remake at all with every single character of the Original remaining pure and untouched.- DilFilmy.com
As mentioned in my reviews earlier, A Remake is the easiest way of making your way into the history of cinema, which also gives you a readymade script to start working upon instantly. But after watching this recent version of one of the most stylish and cult movies of Indian Cinema (which got this status in the later years after being a flop initially), I reached a new conclusion about this latest trend in Bollywood. Remaking a cult movie featuring one of the current heart-throbs of the Industry is undoubtedly the safest business projects for a production company. It not only shows that the company is hesitant in making films on some new ideas but it also loudly announces that the makers are now quite over-confident to think that they can surely do something better from the original in their new version. And these two conclusions are clearly proved by Dharma Production’s present remake of their own 1990 project in the following way: 1. Karan Malhotra’s AGNEEPATH is not at all a remake of Mukul S. Anand’s classic in a true manner. It takes too many liberties, makes too many deletions and adds too many insertions showing the over-confidence of its makers mentioned above. Many important characters of the original (like of Mithun, Madhavi, Tinnu Anand, Goga Kapoor and more) are taken off completely and many new are added, out of which only one works in a fine way, thankfully. But due to these hugely heavy manipulations, the real impact of the original gets lost and is visible only in parts. So, actually Karan’s current new age version just takes the basic idea plus some of its key characters from the 1990 film and then gives you a completely different product all together. 2. But even then, despite of making it so distinctively, Dharma Production still publicized it as a Remake of AGNEEPATH in order to get all the business benefits associated with the buzz as stated above. In fact this publicity stunt of making a remake of the hugely popular 1990 film will help them in two ways. Firstly it will bring in the Big Initial as essentially required for such mega project in its first weekend. Plus, since it is not exactly A Remake, it will re-install the memories of the past and would boost the demand of their own original 1990 project in the Satellite and Home Video market once again. So it’s a perfect two way profitable business plan being played here by the producers. Coming to the review of the movie, it’s a pretty easy task if one writes about the film as a remake of Mukul. S. Anand’s AGNEEPATH of 1990. Because frankly, from that point of view it fails miserably since it lacks the 4 essential aspects of its original. Now Mukul’s AGNEEPATH had a powerful Vijay Dinanath Chauhan with his own impeccable style (followed by the youngsters even today), a strong mother with her truthful ideals, a lovable nurse-wife understanding her husband perfectly and an honest police officer who had a mutually respectful relationship with Vijay. Unfortunately none of these four elements are there in Karan Malhotra’s official remake. There is very less emphasis given to the mother-son track, the nurse- wife gets converted into a beauty parlour owner degrading the character itself and the police officer never really feels like a strong official ever. But most importantly there is no Vijay Dinanath Chauhan here in this 2012 AGNEEPATH unexpectedly. And that’s where I have certain reservations with this so called remake of the cult classic. Mukul S. Anand conceived Vijay Dinanath Chauhan as a larger than life persona, a macho man who had both mercy for the needy and terror for the culprits in his decorated eyes. But here in Karan Malhotra’s version we have a young well built Boy playing Vijay and not the Man, Vijay Dinanath Chauhan as in the original. Mukul’s Vijay was a powerful Don, who also happened to be the Messiah for the poor and was loved by everyone immensely due to his good deeds. He worked with the BAD but had a heart thinking for the poor and humanity as a whole. But I honestly couldn’t understand this new Vijay and his ideals which are all confusing. At one end Karan’s Vijay living in a chawl, is doing many charity works and running his own vans for the cause. But on the other hand he has no objections and is very keen in dealing in Drugs which in fact is the key factor ruining our society, particularly the people staying in the same....more