Aag - Movie Review

Aag

Genre Action

Director Ram Gopal Varma

Cast Amitabh Bachchan, Mohanlal, Ajay Devgan, Prashant Raj

Storyline A cop hires two buddies to capture the dreaded gangster Babban Singh

Bottomline Miracle cure for insomnia


David Dhawan made Jodi No.1, as a cheeky tribute to Sholay. Though irreverent, that was true homage. Unpretentious, it interpreted the classic effortlessly, confident in its own skin and consistent with the director’s style. Ram Gopal Varma Ki… [Insert appropriate Hindi ‘gaali’, if you are a fan of the original] is an insufferable potboiler about a bandit called Gabbar. The kind of film that makes turkeys like Daag – The Fire look infinitely slicker.

There’s no stopping Varma’s Aag, especially, after he cuts off his editor’s arms (in the original, Gabbar cuts off Thakur’s). The film agonisingly runs for over two and a half hours, unleashing its sadistic streak with bursts of Babban (Bachchan playing out his childhood fantasy, just like a child possessed) and we find ourselves at the butt of all cruel jokes.

It’s difficult to review Aag because I kept nodding off to sleep, waking up to be occasionally frightened by the name mothers will drop in the coming weeks to scare kids crying in the cinemas: “Soja, nahi to Nisha Kothari aa jaayegi.” Nisha makes ‘su-side’ sound like a good idea.

Sho lay was way ahead of its times with elaborate set-piece action sequences of an epic scale – remember the painstakingly shot and orchestrated train-being-chased-by-dacoits sequence in the original? Here, Ramu rents out run down ru ins of a fort and lets his Steadicam operator run amok. Deserted ruins instead of a speeding train crashing into timber for an impact? The metaphors can’t be more definitive of the respective narratives or the audience response. Watching stuntmen who’re shot at fall down animatedly, you let it pass thinking maybe he’s just recreating the 1970s feel all over. You may have forgiven him for that too, if it were consistent. Aag is a confused product. Suddenly, it opts fo r the slickness and subtlety of Company. Sholay came across as a seamless narrative, in spite of the motley crew of unforgettable characters. Here, in spite of its attempt to simplify, the screenplay is terribly disj ointed, at times even making you forget the characters that exist in the film. There are all of three scenes to write home about. Veerendra Saxena as A.K. Hangal is heartrendingly good. Two, Bachchan as Babban when he chops off the Inspector’s fingers is psychotically effective and the third, I forget but that Prashant Raj chap isn’t half-bad.