The remake of the 90′s cult movie – Agneepath might have sounded like a bad idea on paper. After all, it is so deeply embedded with the strong presence of a performance which defined the star, and the star which defined the movie. Amitabh Bachchan’s white suited, guy-liner endorsing gangster, might have been a 90′s take on the many smuggling movies of the 70′s – viz. Don and Deewar. But what made Agneepath different then, was its no holds barred, self destructive protagonist, who is solely driven by revenge. How could one recreate that? Debutante director Karan Malhotra has the answer for that. And the answer is .. not to recreate *that*. 2012′s Agneepath is a remake of the 90′s original in as much way as Ram Gopal Varma remade the Godfather into Sarkar (and Sarkar Raaj). It does not attempt to shift the time scale and create similar scenes/situations existing in a parallel universe, re-enacted by a different group of actors. Instead, it redefines the dynamics, the relationships and the narrative to a certain extent, and yet, pays tribute to the presence of the original. And THAT is how you remake movies – not by driving your script to make more cash, but by making your characters come back to life..or rather offer a new life to your characters.
By now you must have got it that I loved this movie, despite a few silly unwanted additives. But when the end product is so damn good, who am I to complain. Hit the jump, as I discuss a bit more in details, and of course will be making some comparisons with the original [inevitably]. SPOILER ALERT
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So, the Screen awards for 2012 got handed out in an elaborate awards function show last night. We’ll get to see more of it in a few weeks, when the heavily edited, and appropriately placed emoticons of Priyanka Chopra smiling at Shahid Kapoor’s jokes will be one of the highlights of the show. Because, if we talk about the awards, the final winners list looks more like a token give-away to anyone who attended the show. And just in case the blogosphere doesn’t explode with opposing comments over SRK winning an award in a year where he’s mostly done more publicity work than Times Square billboards, Screen has quite conveniently created new categories to make everyone a very happy family. Welcome to the Bollywood awards season – the season of egalitarian policy and where acting doesn’t matter.
