Director: Mehul Kumar; Writer: K.K. Singh; Producer: Mehul Kumar; Cinematographer: Russi Billimoria; Editor: Yusuf Sheikh; Cast: Nana Patekar, Dimple Kapadia, Atul Agnihotri, Mamta Kulkarni, Paresh Rawal, Tinnu Anand, Danny Denzongpa, Farida Jalal
Duration: 02:26:43; Aspect Ratio: 2.353:1; Hue: 27.493; Saturation: 0.133; Lightness: 0.343; Volume: 0.335; Cuts per Minute: 20.378; Words per Minute: 77.525
Summary: Local Maharashtrian ‘anti-hero’ Patekar
expands his vigilante image (cf. Ankush, 1985;
Prahaar, 1992) into his first big-budget, solo
star vehicle. He plays Pratap, the wayward
grandson of a Gandhian nationalist. Evicted
from his house for dishonesty, which caused
the death of his grandfather, he grows up and
collects rent for a slum-owner (Rawal),
maintaining a fervent contempt for legality and
a belief in the basic rightness of taking the law
into one’s own hands, an ideology repeatedly
endorsed in the film. From this perspective he
takes on the might of the corrupt builder Yograj
(Anand) and the gang boss Cheetah
(Denzongpa). In the end, sentenced to death,
he delivers, directly to camera, a spine-chilling
harangue ostensibly in favour of communal
harmony, but in fact directly invoking the
language associated with the Shiv Sena leader
Bal Thackeray (cf. Anand Patwardhan’s
Father, Son and Holy War, 1994). The film uses
the fearless journalist Megha Dixit (Kapadia),
raped in the film by Cheetah, to reinforce its
basic message that Pratap’s lumpen-brutalism,
directly connected with Shiv Sena gangsterism,
is the legitimate inheritor of the nationalist
freedom struggle. It also continues director
Mehul Kumar’s previous odes to macho
posturing (Tiranga, 1992). The song Love rap,
picturised on romantic lead Agnihotri and
Kulkarni, assisted the film’s ominous success.
Pratap's laughter at the boy's plight is the first proper illustration of his lack of empathy and his saving the boy (for the reward from his father) underscores this.
A possible personality disorder can be detected. His catchphrase: "Chhote dimaag pe chot lagne se maut hoti hai." suggests a recognition of the body and mind being part of a system similarly vulnerable to trauma.
Pratap's "zehreeli hasee" is noted and criticised by the widow: there is an ongoing relationship between laughter and injustice articulated in the film, and laughter is an old sign of madness in Bombay cinema.
An inferno and riots engulf the basti of Laxmi Nagar: the context of communalism, police complicity, the land lobby and political-industrial nexus all come together in the film.
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