The shining glory

There is an ancient Chinese curse which says, “May you live in interesting times.” The Chinese culture believes in stability and peace, therefore “interesting times” here meant chaos and conflict.

As an incurable chronic Bollywood obsessed individual of the frontbencher kinds, I am absolutely excited at the prospect of what the next four months have to deliver. Ever since I started understanding movies nothing has inspired and entertained me more than the cat and mouse genre. Look closely at our biggest movie till date ‘Sholay’; it is a cat and a mouse chase.

Thakur strikes Gabbar when he comes to his weapon suppliers den and enjoys an evening of dance and drinks. Before that Gabbar attacks the village enjoying Holi bash. Gabbar traps Thakur and then amputates him. Sholay is full of the cat and mouse traps.

So when I saw the trailer of Akshay Kumar and Neeraj Pandey’s upcoming film ‘Rustom’ I was totally amazed by the content. ‘Rustom’ is a tale of passion crime or the trailer displays that. Based on the famous 1959 Nanavati case, the trailer shows much of the plot but hides more—like how a perfect thriller movie trailer should be.

To me, the most impressive part of this trailer was the underscoring of the simple fact that I have now begun to absolutely admire about the Akshay Kumar-Neeraj Pandey team. They chose all their actors carefully. In roughly about five seconds each, we get some real intriguing characters established.

Pawan Malhotra’s shrewd cop, Parmeet Sethi’s anything for money detective, Esha Gupta’s vengeful agenda, a confused torn wife in Illeana, Kumud Mishra as the agenda-based newspaper owner and the biggest of them all an upright naval officer played by Akshay.

They all are put in front of us, as a smart bakery owner will place his best pastries in all their shining glory. You look at them. You are tempted. What adds to the impatience here is that the bakery is a good one-and-a-half month away from its opening date.

Neeraj Pandey in my book now is the biggest thriller maker on this side of 2000 in Bollywood. Look at his work – ‘A Wednesday’, which was not just surprisingly taut and thrill -a-minute work, it also revived Naseeruddin Shah from doldrums.

Then came ‘Special 26’, which in my book after ‘Satya’ was Manoj Bajpai's best work till date. The movie is a super tale of modern day Robin Hoods, who steal from crooks and corrupt power brokers. Then came ‘Baby’, a supremely written work on counter-terrorism that India needs badly. ‘Airlift’ took this pair to a different level altogether; sure some critics were left angry at the factual inaccuracies but this duo needs big time points for daring to tell different tales with such sincerity and polish.

The best part about Neeraj Pandey, Akshay Kumar duo is the sheer originality and attempts at different stories that can be watched by a common man looking for entertainment. Most directors get drunk on the snobbery of attempting a great story. Not so with team Akshay-Neeraj.

All of their three attempts together were totally completely watchable. Very briefly, Akshay Kumar had this luxury with Umesh Mehra, a much underrated pot-boiler filmmaker of the 1980s and 1990s. Mehra and Akshay together worked on 4 Khiladi movies, two of which were box office smashers. Probably Mehra’s limitation as a filmmaker put a full stop to the partnership as the audiences grew out of the Khiladi genre of movies.

There is also one more reason I look forward to Akshay Kumar movies of this kind. Call me feudal Indian male. Akshay has a towering personality, who by default outshines others on screen. He was able to do that to Anupam Kher in ‘Special 26’. Let me tell you - not many can do that to “Dr Dang”. Akshay also has an amazing chemistry with all his leading ladies- a quality that Bollywood refuses to acknowledge.All of this makes me look forward to ‘Rustom’. Bring it on Mr Pandey.

By: Rahul Deo Bharadwaj