Apoorva Lakhia's Zanjeer has many
similarities to its four-decade old namesake Prakash
Mehra's Zanjeer (1973) that breathed fire and brimstone. The original
film earned Amitabh Bachchan the epithet 'angry young man' and made him world-famous.
The 2013 action thriller brings Andhra icon Chiranjeevi's son, Ram
Charan (also an Andhra superstar) to Bollywood. It retains the key plot
points and the main characters are rechristened Vijay (Ram Charan), Mala
( Priyanka Chopra), Sher Khan (Sanjay Dutt), Teja (Prakash Raj) and Mona
(Mahie Gill) just like the original.
this film should be judged as a stand-alone offering because
attempts to compare the two versions will find the current one falling short,
especially in the dialogue and music departments. Nostalgia happens when some
original dialogue like 'Yeh police station hai, tere baap ka ghar
nahi' and 'Sher Khan beimaani ka dhanda bhi imaandari se karta hai' are
uttered.
To reprise the plot, Zanjeer is the story of an idealistic cop, Vijay Khanna, wanting to bring criminals to the book. Set in Andhra Pradesh, the initial part sets the stage for how dons and ministers have more clout with and within the administration, than an honest policeman.
To reprise the plot, Zanjeer is the story of an idealistic cop, Vijay Khanna, wanting to bring criminals to the book. Set in Andhra Pradesh, the initial part sets the stage for how dons and ministers have more clout with and within the administration, than an honest policeman.
The film doesn’t waste any time in establishing its
terribleness – while the 1973 original opened with a gritty scene at a police
station, Lakhia’s remake opens with a wannabe James Bond number with females
clad in S&M costumes, lasciviously touching chains (to modernise the
Zanjeer innuendo) and writhing in orgasmic pleasure. In the original Amitabh
Bachchan makes a low key entry as he wakes up from a nightmare (he probably
dreamed about Priyanka Chopra in the remake, but more on that later). In this
film, our hero Ram Charan makes an entry with a large establishing shot of his
dad Chiranjeevi and beats up gundas as ‘Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram’ blares in
the background. People look on, nodding their heads to the rhythm and
applauding. Yeah, real subtle. Lakhia isn’t interested respecting Prakash
Mehra; he is just hell bent on assaulting the audience with an endless array of
cheap jokes, gratuitous violence, generic item songs, unpleasant characters in
garish costumes and a deluge of bad acting. In one scene, Prakash Raj licks his
lips and says “Chicken and chicks are the two meows of life”. In another, a
little boy at a hospital asks a policeman, “Uncle mere daddy kahan gaye?”,
despite his daddy lying next to him, burnt to char. This film is not merely
cacophonous; it is spiteful, as if Lakhia wants to lace the cartoonish ‘Simbly
South’ style of Rohit Shetty with the smutty Mumbaiyya masala of Sanjay Gupta.
As a result, the tone of Zanjeer wavers from dreadfully unimaginative to smugly
lazy.
