Will Bollywood take the message now?

Rangoon’ the much-awaited film of the season released last Friday. Despite its huge star cast, the film tanked at the box office. On the other hand, ‘The Ghazi Attack’ did not have such big names, but had solid performances and interesting storyline. This proves that the audience today is content-driven and Bollywood should churn movies with good content rather than solely riding on huge star cast

In a span of two Fridays, the audience has delivered a simple lesson yet again for Bollywood. In an interesting sequence of Friday releases of first ‘The Ghazi Attack’ and then ‘Rangoon’, the two movies have different plot lines and genre. One is a period film focusing on love and the other is a complete one-dimensional war thriller.

The audiences have showered their affection on ‘The Ghazi Attack’ – across language versions of its release. In contrast the much celebrated ‘Rangoon’ has fallen flat unless there is a major miracle waiting to happen, ‘Rangoon’, politely said, is the first major financial disaster of Bollywood in 2017.

‘Rangoon’ is also a major disappointment for my kind of Vishal Bharadwaj fans. There was a time when this man delivered awe-inspiring work in ‘Makdi’, ‘Maqbool’, ‘Omkara’ and the lesser celebrated ‘Kaminey’. His movies had substance - dialogues, songs, high drama.

Pankaj Kapoor, Ajay Devgn and Saif Ali Khan owe their top performances to this man. With ‘Rangoon’ sadly VB has come across as a sorry shadow of his supreme form, once upon a time. Today, however, we need to focus on this ruthless audience’s message.

‘Rangoon’ was praised all the way to the moon and back by the star ranked critics. I am surprised. This movie, which is 2 hours 50 odd minute long does not allow you to come out with four memorable dialogues. The audience obviously rejected it.

Look at ‘The Ghazi Attack’. A theme, which was so different that, trust me, none of the 90s distributors would have touched it unless the director would have pushed in one Silk Smitha item number – maybe dancing inside the Pakistani submarine.

A southern director conceived and shot this movie, I am told, in less than three months with almost minimal resources of Rs 30-odd- crore. Compare this with the gigantic investment in ‘Rangoon’. To be fair, the production values do show in ‘Rangoon’. ‘The Ghazi Attack’ had a richer better, content and presentation.

Compare the star casts of ‘Rangoon’ and ‘The Ghazi Attack’. ‘Rangoon’ reads like an Australian batting line-up of the Steve Waugh era. ‘The Ghazi Attack’ star cast is like Baroda Ranji Trophy team. Yet, the audiences fell in love with the film.

‘The Ghazi Attack’ is the first sleeper hit of the year. Hats off to Karan Johar in that sense, in three years this man has picked up two super concept movies from south makers. The first was, of course, the mega epic called ‘Baahubali’.

The audience’s message is clear. Our filmmakers from Bollywood need to go back to libraries and newspapers and probably the internet and look for real content, and then polish and present it. Celebrated critics, who are predetermined and biased, will give you four, five or seven stars but when it will come to the real celluloid test.

Content like ‘Rangoon’ will go down the dumps as it deserves to. ‘Rangoon’ is another example of how our audiences are fed up with movies, which are conceived on the strength of just star cast and promotion strategies. A good content or at least content, which is sincere will make it to the top.

‘The Ghazi Attack’ is a signal strong enough from our audience that they can judge, love and shower success on content, which entertains them first and if it is intelligent then that is a bonus. Sure some of the makers and critics will go back and blame it on the intelligence of the audience. Yes, sometimes good movies fail but sadly ‘Rangoon’ does not qualify in that category. It is a bad celluloid product, which was shown the door. Audiences have ensured success to dark horses like ‘Ardh Satya’ and ‘Pan Singh Tomar’, so let us not blame it on audience’s judgement.

It is high time through the fate of these two movies that our makers realise that audiences and not screen counts should be their focus. Any shrewd maker will realise that in a quarter of promotion costs they can get better content creators. Hope Bollywood takes the message home, at least now.

Else sinking submarines will keep winning over high-flying ladies on wild horses!