The Burning Train

Okay this is the kind of film you need to approach with an open mind and be much less critical about - this is mindless entertainment. If you spend your time looking for flaws while watching it, you will indeed find a few and and there's no way you're going to enjoy it. There isn't much logic in The Burning Train, it is an action potboiler, but I mean it in a good way because for once some effort was made to try something different and innovative. Among the shortcomings, the film takes quite some time before it starts picking up. I think it would have been better had it started with the train ride and shown the silly romantic cliches in flashbacks instead of giving such a lengthy prologue to the actual fun that everyone is set up for.

And once the train takes off, there's a long way to go - the premise set by the title materialises just shortly before the film ends. Does it mean the wait is not worth it? I'm not sure, the film is quite enjoyable and at least there's something to wait for given the title. The four actors are all quite good, and the contrasting archetypes played by the two leading lady are particularly interesting - one is a modern, new-age woman, the other is a traditional, conservative sort of self-righteous heroine. This distinction is brilliantly captured in the film's first song - "Meri Nazar Hai Tujh Pe" - sung by the sensational Asha Bhosle. Sadly the film doesn't give you much to marvel at, but it is quite enjoyable, and its final sequences are pretty fun.

The Burning Train is an action thriller disaster film directed by Late Ravi Chopra. The film stars an ensemble cast of Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Late Vinod Khanna, Late Parveen Babi, Jeetendra, Neetu Kapoor, Late Vinod Mehra, Late Navin Nischol and Danny Denzogpa.

Indian fastest passenger train met with a tragedy in its maiden voyage due to sabotage.

The film was an average grosser upon it's release but is now considered as classic and is one of it's kind film ever produced in the history of Indian cinema. The film is not only entertaining but can also be called as an high octane film which will keep you engaged with the fast paced screenplay primarily in second half of the film.

The plot of the film is unique and execution is good, the first half of the film makes the foundation of the film and second half delivers. The only drawback which I felt and wasn't required was too many subplots which I didn't wished to share to avoid spoilers, these subplots might irritate viewers and also breaks the rhythm of the film.

Acting in the film was mind blowing and all the characters were perfect but a very special mention for Danny as he was yet again terrific in his negative role. The acting was so perfect that even the smaller roles of Asha Sachdev, Late Rajendra nath, Late Yunus Parvez, Asrani and Late Dinesh Thakur left an impression.

The music of the film was mind blowing and all credit to the legendry Late R. D. Burman for such a marvelous music. Climax of the film was perfect and gives a great closure to the film. A must watch film.

Indian filmmakers have been taking inspiration from Hollywood flicks but very few such filmmakers openly admit it. Director Ravi Chopra (son of the legendary film director - late B.R. Chopra) saw a Hollywood movie - The Towering Inferno (1974) and got inspiration for making an Indian movie. He openly admitted this fact also. The Towering Inferno was based on the plot of the fire in a building whereas Ravi Chopra decided to make a movie on an incident of burning of a running train. And he made a brilliant movie whose climax (the train on fire) is simply mesmerizing and by inserting all the regular Bollywood formulae according to the taste of the (Indian) public, he finally served a Masaala flick to the Hindi movie audience.

The Burning Train is the story of three childhood buddies - Ashok (Dharmendra), Vinod (Vinod Khanna) and Randhir (Danny Denjongpa). Vinod and Randhir were at loggerheads even in their childhood and the rivalry continues even after their growing-up and becoming employees of the Indian Railways. Ashok has been in love with Seema (Hema Malini) but gets heartbroken when she leaves him due to his losing his wealth and becoming poor and vanishes from his life. Vinod marries the love of his life - Sheetal (Parveen Babi) and gets a kid but his family life is not pleasant because he is not able to give sufficient time to his family due to extreme busyness. Randhir's jealousy towards Vindo has not only carried over since their childhood but it has deepened in adulthood due to Randhir's losing out to Vinod for Sheetal's love also.

Why Vinod is not able to devote time towards his family ? Because he has been relentlessly working upon his dream project of making a magnificent train for the Indian Railways. The train is all set for its inaugural run from Delhi to Mumbai when Sheetal finally leaves Vinod's house and highly sad Vinod moves to the control room of the train to take care of the technicalities, sending his friend and colleague Rakesh (Vinod Mehra) to Mumbai by flight to welcome the train there upon arrival. Ashok and Randhir are also on the train due to different reasons. There are different kinds of passengers on the train including a small time thief - Ravi (Jeetendra) and a young girl - Madhu (Neetu Singh) who is escaping from a marriage being forced on her by her family.

The drama gets a boost when Ashok comes across Seema in the train and to avoid her, gets down from the train in the middle of the journey only to find Randhir in a bar who tells him that he has kept a time bomb in the engine of the train to sabotage the train and taint the repute of Vinod. Now starts the tussle between the baddie and the heroes to save the train which is set on fire after the explosion and with its brakes also failing, is going to meet its disaster and the death of all its passengers. The prolonged and thrilling climax leads to the happy ending of the movie.

The movie has all kinds of regular Bollywood formulae, entertaining the typical Indian movie buffs but its essence is the climax which justifies its title. The climax is pretty long and sensational. It's technically superb and contains several twists and turns, making the final part of the story of the movie a see-saw. It's full of not only action and thrill but also sentiments and music. It containscertain tear-jerking scenes too. Several character artists have got ample opportunity to leave their mark in the final sequence of events.

Though Ravi Chopra had got the inspiration for making this movie from The Towering Inferno, by default perhaps, it gives glimpses of the Titanic mishap also (the Hollywood movie - Titanic was made much later than this movie) in which the inaugural journey of the ship fails and that journey contains all kinds of RASAs of literature - romance, sentiments, humour, action, thrill just everything. This way, similarities can easily be seen between The Burning Train and Titanic.

The music of R.D. Burman is not great but not bad either. The songs appear good to ears when listened to during the movie. However the Qawwaali - Pal Do Pal Ka Saath Hamaara Pal Do Pal Ke Yaarane Hain is a memorable one both in terms of the lyrics and the melody and also the picturization.

The Burning Train boasts of a great star cast, viz. Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Vinod Khanna, Parveen Babi, Jeetendra, Neetu Singh, Vinod Mehra, Danny Dengjongpa, Simi Garewal, Asha Sachdev, Romesh Sharma, Padmini Kapila etc. I give full marks to director Ravi Chopra that he did justice to all the characters and allowed every one of them to leave his / her mark in the story. All of of them have done pretty well though footage awarded to them varies from character to character.

All in all, it's a highly entertaining movie with technical excellence which I unconditionally recommend to movie buffs of all categories. I wonder why this movie was commercially unsuccessful despite all the necessary ingredients of success. Perhaps it was ahead of its time. Indian audience did not like such movies those days. However now the taste of the Indian audience has changed a lot and I believe, if B.R. Films decides to re-release it, it will get the love and appreciation of the Indian audience.

I think this movie was ahead of its time, and would be a great film to remake with current technology and sensibility. It is a flawed film, and many of these flaws are due to its 80 Bollywood tropes, but it has a lot of plus points which are still impressive in 2016. I will mention them first before I discuss the flaws:

Great character drama. The train is full of all sorts of different kinds of characters, funny, quirky, sexy, angry, criminal, religious, young, old, family, couples, single, and the interactions between them make for very entertaining drama. Think of a road trip movie, except on a train with a myriad of characters.

Great screenplay. Except for the speedbreakers at the start, once the journey on the train begins the screenplay packs a lot of interesting situations and turns of events that keep the journey interesting; the initial character introductions and banter, the realization the breaks have failed, the train catching fire, the attempts by the passengers to save themselves, the frantic efforts by the railway officials to come up with ideas to save the train racing against time. There is never really a dull moment.

Great action. I would not have thought an 80's Bollywood movie would have had such technical finesse. The fast moving burning train actually looks real, the interiors look real, you actually feel like it was shot in an actual train(I am sure some portions were) The parts where some of the characters climb out of the moving train and then try to get to the next cabin by going across the windows or running on the top of the train looks like they really did it. The pyrotechnics are on par with 80's Hollywood. It is evident that this was a big budget movie for its time and it is executed with the same professionalism as similar disaster movies like Towering Inferno.

Great acting. Aside from the 80's acting style, another layer of realism is added by the reactions of the passengers to the impending doom, the desperation to survive and amidst all the mayhem to maintain their humanity. Vinod Khanna as the train's engineer particularly is notable and very handsome, you do wonder why the gene was not passed on to Akshay Khanna.

Now I will begin with the cons:

Takes time to start. The initial half hour is about introducing the leads and their love interests, and there are a couple of unnecessary songs. In fact the only song that really works in the movie is the lone song on the train between all the characters to entertain themselves on the journey. This actually can happen on Indian trains.

Female characters are weak. This is 80's patriarchal Bollywood when feminism had not really taken off yet, and it is evident here as the female characters have little personality and just react to their male counterparts.

At times OTT. Another 80's Bollywood staple is the "Disshom" fighting scenes which are cheesy and you have the OTT comic characters, the Johnny livers of their time, like Asrani with their slapstick routines. The villainous characters are one dimensionally bad.

If it was remade today for a contemporary audiences many of these 80's staples should and would be done away, leaving a great disaster movie. There are not many notable Bollywood disaster movies, so this would provide great material for a contemporary one.

This 1980 star-studded box office disaster is a real old favorite of mine. A very slick, very action-oriented movie with a non-standard theme that promised to change Bollywood movie-making standards of the early 80s (Ramesh Sippy's "Shaan" was another one in the same genre). Never mind why people spurned this movie when it was released - it was probably released in the wrong decade! In many ways, this was a landmark movie. It was one of the few movies made on the Railways. Quite surprising that Bollywood took so long to pay a fitting tribute to the Railways because (at least during those days) a humongous percentage of working Indian populace were directly or indirectly dependent on the railways for their livelihood. Why, the Indian Railways were one of the largest employers in those days! And the best part is the tribute doesn't go over the board. The Railways depiction is more or less realistic (note to critics: the song-and-dance parts before the Super Express is launched is just plain old Bollywood masala – nothing to do with the Railways).

The train has been the ubiquitous, yet highly sidelined prop in dozens of Bollywood movies. Who can forget the passenger train that brings the jailer to Ramgarh in "Sholay" or the endless shots of Victoria Terminus in any movie based in Bombay. Even now, trains have been very much around in the Bollywood landscape. "Bunty aur Babli" recently effectively used Indian Railways throughout the movie to enhance the small-town feel. The economy of many Indian towns (especially those in UP, where the Railways network is densest) is highly dependent on the Railways. The trains in India have been much more than just a mode of transport – they are a part of our very fabric.

Anyway, back to the movie – it about the launch of a new super fast express train that runs between Delhi and Bombay in a record time of 14 hours (clearly a tribute to the swanky Rajdhani Express trains that was the hottest thing on the tracks those days). The movie starts in Varanasi rail factory (Diesel Locomotive Works), where a group of capable engineers (Khanna, Dharam "paaji", Mehra, etc) toil away to design the new engine. After years of effort, their efforts finally pay off and the new express (er, aptly named "Super Express") is launched. However, engineers are humans too. During all this, the lead characters go through heartbreaks (Dharam-Hema), family crisis (Khanna-Babi) and professional showdowns (Danny-Khanna). Just when Khanna and co. are rejoicing over the success of the project, things go wrong.

The smitten Danny makes sure that he does what he can to ruin what would have been his pet project. To avenge his humiliation, he plants a bomb in the engine and renders the brakes useless. Meanwhile the train is full of standard stock characters – a kind-hearted petty thief (Jeetendra), a runaway bride (Singh), a school teacher (Simi Gerewal) with an army of school kids, a diamond smuggler (Ranjeet) who has an undercover cop (Sujit Kumar) chasing him, the heartbroken hero (Dharmendra) and his ex-flame (Hema) with her new doctor beau (Nischol) a pompous army man, the Hindu pandit sitting next to the staunch Muslim, the paan-chewing seductress in red sari (Asha Sachdev), the Sardarji, the Parsi, the Marwari – you name it! So the brakes have failed, the engine drivers are dead and the runaway train is speeding away on the tracks while the unsuspecting passengers have a ball singing qawwalis in the train. There is no way to contact them (remember – this was early 80s – no mobile phones – ah! Blissful days) Luckily, we have Dharamendra who jumps back into the train to save lives. Things go from bad to worse as the pantry catches fire and the fire spreads rapidly. Our heroes on the train take the onus to do something to save their own lives while the heroes outside are trying their best to get things out of the train's way! Trust me: stagecoach-sagas cannot get better than this.

As I mentioned, it was one of the slickest action movies of its time – use of miniatures, complex action sequences, chase scenes, explosions, aerial shots – it has a bit of everything. Excellent cinematography and a plausible screenplay add to the effect. The all-star cast is excellent, especially Khanna who delivers a powerful performance as the engineer trying to set things right. It is probably "inspired" by some Hollywood flick, but the thing is it has been very well done. The songs by R.D. Burman are excellent. I especially love the qawwali "Pal do pal ka saath hamara". "Vaada" and "Meri Nazar" are also quite good. This was a very, very good effort by Ravi Chopra (who later moved on to make movies like "Baghban" and now "Babul") and, once the express leaves Delhi station, is a non-stop action thriller. Pure Bollywood vintage action flick, very slickly made and served with loads of quintessential Bollywood masala.