of pros and gentlemen players

This post owes it existence to Costis, a greek friend of mine, and rapidly evolving into an Indian with the incredible enthusiasm of Mowgli let loose in the jungles. Well, so he picked up the 'Khiladi' reference in that masterfully self spoofing SRK blockbuster-OSO. Ever since, I have been dangling and dropping Khiladi refernces all over in a rather in-ur- face impish way and along the way I got thinking about where exactly I had imbued this runaway cultural reference point. The practical upshot of such and associated speculation is what is being laid out here-
so cut to the early nineties when movie makers were trying to pump some adrenaline and a fresh breath of life into movies that were rapidly descending into cliched spoofs of themselves through the eighties- An increasingly discerning audience was beginnning to laugh vaudevillian traditions out of the theatres straight to the all-ccounts-in-red purgatory reserved for producers who overstep their financial cloth while cutting the film's cloth. The most evident signs of this mainstream decadence mainfested themself in that irrestible and yet critic-trashworthy genre called the bollywood action movie. Action in bollywood was all about passion and the force of ur intentions rather than any realistic depiction of unarmed combat or the laws of physics pertaining to mass-momentum dynamics thereof. So from early days, ( read Dharmendra, Sanjeev Kumar , Raj Kumar and the enfant terrible 'yahoo' Kapoor days followed by Sunny Deol, Jackie shroff and Anil Kapoor)


action in 70 mm eastmon colour consisted of heroes or their doubles (more likely) performing death defying jumps from cliffs into foamy waves crashing beneath and emerging out with all the grace of an Indian prince approaching his throne for his coronation , ready to cosh , bash or whip the baddies senseless , dead or into a righteous repentant mould depending on the director's whim . It wasn;t unusual to find the angry young protagonist finding his ma or sis being held hostage and himself being shackled in iron chains summon up all his reserves of energy, send a not-so silent desperate plea for providential help and then with appropriate thunderclap of a background score find himslef supercharged with providential energy that would have led a certain eponymous lad from krypton to apply for indian citizenship, and proceed to make short work of the manacles that bound him or the iron bars that restrain him . If one were to take a rationalist viewpoint he might defend the makers by asserting that the entire movie was just a western conspiracy to bellitle our very own desi 'SAIL' products !!
But u had to admit there is only so far u can go with heavily overlaid surrealism making ever-increasing demands on our capacities of disbelief before cantering forth into goofyland!!!
so the nineties were a time of heady experimentation outrageous new plotlines and even the emergence of that most audacious of all entities -the anti-hero fittingly brought alive by a fiery earnest dapper younster from delhi who would go on to dominate the indian dream factory till the present day. but here was the fundamntal conundrum that an earnest young bunch of directors who wanted to dish out slicker snazzier entertainment to a generation who were rapidly acquiring MTV-weaned sensibilities faced- ambitious plotlines could be conjured out by any number of loony scriptwriters, wholesome and moving odes to love were the speciality of many a filmmaker dynasty-no one arguably can make a love story onscreen as rich and embellished as an indian!!! acting -well, the world over its justa case of camouflaging ur hamming tendencies. easily acquired here!!!
but action-that red herring of technique, execution and overhelming cinmatic impact factor; there is no way a high octane action movie can be made till u know how to pull off a series of continuous frame to frame gripping moments of fast paced onscreen dynamic that keeps the viewers entranced enough to watch the scenes unfold with the same adrenaline chraged tunnel vision that the charcter in the sequence develops in the middle of all the fireworks. and this is not easy !!!
one just has to see Batman begins to realise how humongously talented directors with fit and limber actors can create a less- than edge-of -the seat batmobile chase sequence. And at the time that we speak of action was either the superlative Ripley's belive it or not sequence or plain boring punches being traded to the beat of a car tyre being struck (dishoom dishoom!!!) well the first course of action was of course to start induicng an elemnet of enrgetic angle-changing motion of the fight scenes and one could already see the acmera swinging to follow teh combatyants to give the impression of a high-speed swift power packed event in manhoman desai's unabashedly and deliberately idiotic 1980 fairyrtale capers!!!but what was needed was more exotic and impressive shots which required well thought splitsecond reflex choreography and a lot more of atheleticisim. that last was a laughable impossiblity . heroes then were either long legged bamboo thin beanpoles or paunchy and on the flabby side alpha males who could more convinclingly growl and scowl than keep their legs steady in a fight. what was needed was a real action hero who could dance , flykick, somersault up into the air and then land catlike a few feet away do bakcflips and jacknife ata gunshot's notice and in short cultuivate an image of an alpha male daredevil.oops sorry i forgot to mention he had to mouth a few lines by way of dialogues , do a good imitation of christ on the crucifix when he finds his mom and sis in life thereatening or modesty threatening circumstances(more likely in the sisters' case!!!) and be a dashing cute- all -brawns- and- too- naiv-e- to ditinguish -poison- from milk- cast in the greek hero mould protagonist. and the stage was set for a adventurous swashbukcler to answer the summons!!
enter a strapping young punju lad with all the signs of rebellion written all over him-born rajiv hari om-bhatia in 1967 to a middle class family in jalandhar, he spent some of his childhood in delhi and most of his schooling and college days in bombay.
post-college he jumped ship and made it to bangkok wheere he diligently worked as a chef studying martial arts and watching sridevi movies. a couple of years of this far east interlude and he was back in bombay fresh and limber. he was in some sense exactly what the doctor ordered. but even medicines can be given in wrong doses. snapped by some low-flying directors for borderline b-grade movies where he simply played a glorious stuntman he failed to make an impact and would have become just another one of those washed up could-have -beens beachcombers who are a diffused landmark unto themselves in film cities the world over. but all that changed when a business savvy director duo with a keen eye for the wind and for new scripts original or plagiaraised- abbas-mustan (the same chaps who gave india its first successful anti-hero and the most successful onscreen pair-not a coincidence probbaly) noticed the brash young man who was eager to show off his fighting skills and self confessedly was singularly uncomfortably with acting. they cast him in a murder mystery thriller-khiladi(1992). tautly executed and with some surefire moments of adrenaline the movie turned out to be a surprise hit and akshay kumar to everyone;s surprise, most of all, his own, turned out to be a rage -exactly the thing that the doc ordered for the teenyboppers!!he could gyrate, and he could leap and he never ever punched as much as kicked. at long last here was a young man not cast in the chocolatey mould-our very own john wayne !! when u have a good thing going the wise men keep going with it. abbas-mustan followed up this caper with a tough cop-and chocolatey boy male chemistry routine with main khiladi tu anadi (1993) toplining akshay and the other young brat saif 'aashiq awaara' ali khan-still leaving ludicrously a vivid impression of his celebrated mom. the movie had akshay playing teh tough nonnonsense cop with saif ali khan playing the cool and slightly dandy brat of an actor who tags along with the cop to inject some realism into his role as a cop in his forthcoming movie. the movie worked for akshay for much teh same reason that the terminator , a deceade earlier worked for the fittest governor of california- perfect casting!! a tough as nails unsmiling cop witha a crusty wry exterior too jaded to allow even flashing embers of rage through show (ala a lanky B in zanjeer ) was tailor made for a man who could barely go through a romantic scene without giving teh distinct impression taht he was talking to his sister onscreen. the success of the movie started making people begin to take him seriously. here after all was a ouevre that had not been explored in hindi cinema-a slick fun saucy cocktail witha alot of locker room male cammaraderie-for teh first time , the post cable tv generation teenager could go to a hindi movie theatre and come out with teh faint niggling thought at the back of their minds that there was something very nice and likable about watching boys with toys having an old time high and almost whisper lest their girlfriends hear it-"so much like gene hackman " and then go home gleefully to switch on walker, texas ranger. but one swallow and not even two makes summer to mendaciously mutilate teh greek great's adage(apologies to Costis) akshay started creating a serious fan base for himself with rajiv rai's mohra which was an out and out testosterone charged cop and vigilante hounding the bad kingpin behing teh shadows story - almost brimming over with tackiness and yet having the same fun and games quality about it as in the previosu movies. of course part of the movies attraction was that bewitching raveena tandon rain song with the delectable ravs doing a deliberate-on the verge of raunchy seduction act in the rain -the first such memorable sequence after smita patil and amitabh . but the khiladi series and title was well and truly cemented by umesh mehra's saucy bhelpuri offering- sabse bada khiladi, complete with mamta kulkarni and akshay kumar getting up close and personal in what unintentionally or not turned out to be the spiciest song of the year and shortly after that came his most successful and ambitious khiladi movie-khiladiyon ka khiladi!!
one could think of this as the apotheosis of his khiladi career-he romps with a nubile 20 something then leaps into a mud bath with her 40 something sister and finally takes an almighty "panga" with the intimidating as hell undertaker and does it with gusto!!
this truly was the last khiladi movie in just the same sense as superman 2 was the last superman movie before the return. everything else - mr. and mrs. khiladi a tepid action comedy and internatioanl khiladi a series of uncorrelated and unimpressive action sequences fell far far short of expectations and are rightfuly consigned to teh dust heap of celluloid purgatory taht must exist for such movies in pythgagorus's oredrly cosmos !!
the khiladi went on to do bigger, better and different things -comedy and even pure drama rapidly developing a penchant for in ur face backslapping old boy humour(hera pheri, khakee, waqt, garam masala and bhool bhulaiya) and has now metamprhosed into a superb friday evening at the marquee entretainer!!

but well they say a man is got to go back to his roots sometime and so i almost yelled when i caught sight of the upcoming trailer for tashan !!
of course times have changed . the khiladi is older mellower and definitely in the big leaguue(its a aditya chopra production!!) but hey at the core of it its just going to be a boys will be boys movie-plain unabashed fun with guns and unarmed combat.
welcome back khiladi !!