The Sultan of Bollywood

Why I am looking forward to Sultan? To put it straight, Salman’s ‘Sultan’ trailer is smashing. In three-odd minutes it makes you very curious about the plot and you look forward to the movie. But that’s not the reason alone.

Of the entire superstar Khans we have, I daresay Salman looks the youngest. He still passed off as an innocent 28-year-old young man in ‘Bajrangi Bhaijan’ - sure the make-up guy gets some credit, but a large part of the credit goes to the hero for keeping himself that fit.

Suddenly, in the trailer, out of the blue Salman is now willing to play a role, which is totally different from the superhero Chulbul or forever Prem kind of roles of Sooraj Barjatya family marriage factory.

Salman the biggest superstar of our era and the forever young is willing to play his age and in a role, which shows him cornered. For over two decades he was criticised as a man, who loves his physical self and goes topless at the slightest pretext.

He is now willing to stand in front of the mirror and stare at his pot belly, which makes him look humane, to our shock and surprise.

‘Sultan’ will therefore be another game changer movie from Salman. I am willing to bet that Salman probably has something way too big on his hands with the film. This might be his career defining movie.

A vulnerable man, who can hit hard when, put in a place, which makes him feel insulted and slighted. ‘Sultan’ also seems to be having an interesting love story between Anushka and Salman. That we shall know once the movie hits the screen.

There is another reason why I always look forward to movies of this kind from Salman. Here is the biggest point about him, which a lot of us refuse to give him credit for.

Of all the three Khans for a long time he has been rated as the biggest “no-brainer” cinema provider, which I find laughable because if you look at the ‘Baadshah’ and ‘Chennai Express’ kind of movies of SRK or ‘Mela’ and ‘Raja Hindustani’, which Aamir has done besides the Indra Kumar screen burners, you will find a lot many of Sallu’s movies better. No, my idea is not to compare the not so great stuff dished out by the three Khans.

If Aamir was the king of experimenting with different roles, Kamal Hassan of the north as I call him, and SRK established himself as the king of soft romance; Salman has been the genre provider of Bollywood.

Yes, through his innocent and sincere ‘Prem’ he was as much a contributor of bringing back romance to Bollywood in ‘Maine Pyar Kiya’ after two decades of angry young man style bloodshed movies.

He then again through’ Hum Aapke Hain Kaun’ got the genre of clean entertaining family cinema going in Bollywood; this in the 1990s when some of the sharpest double meaning songs and even more ear tearing vulgar dialogues were created.

This movie told Bollywood that cleaner, better cinema meant better money. Aditya Chopra himself confessed that his smasher ‘DDLJ’ was a ‘Hum Aapke…’ inspired tale – SRK owes his biggest hit in that sense to Sooraj and Salman.

In fact in the decade of 2010 when we thought Aamir and SRK were ruling by a big distance, Salman with his ‘Dabangg’ brought back the small town genre cinema in a big way.

Dabangg franchise has also brought back the voluptuous woman of the 70s through Sonakshi; when size zero plastic was ruling, it would have taken Salman’s conviction to judge and deliver as per audience tastes.

A flood of small town flicks post that like ‘Sahib Biwi aur Gangster’ and ‘Tanu Weds Manu’ will surely owe their audience appreciation to ‘Dabangg’ and Salman.

To put it in one line if Kanpur is the new Manhattan – Salman gets the credit. When whole Bollywood was looking at Europe and NRIs, this took some doing.

Therefore, ‘Sultan’ remains a product to look forward to because as much as we ridicule him for his personal mistakes, Salman Khan, the actor and star has an intelligent brain with loads of superstar charisma.

Counting hours to Sultan’s release!

By: Rahul Deo Bharadwaj