Zanjeer

This is a unique movie (well, until every director started to copy the theme).

I don't think I need to comment on the story, it's good though. This is Amitabh's first hit, and he's been on top of the movie industry since then, and did an excellent job as usual. Everyone played their roles very well, and acting wise nothing is wrong. The only thing is if you're like me, you'll think there's a little bit too much violence. Actually, Amitabh got hurt during the shooting and when he was asked he acted like nothing had happened. But later Prakash Mehra felt his head and there was a large bump on it...AB is very dedicated obviously.

But excellent songs! KA are wonderful music directors! An entertaining movie, a must see, and you just have to listen to the superbly composed title music.

Unbelieveable!

As a kid, little Vijay, while hiding in a wardrobe, witnessed his parents' assassination by Teja, a man who was a member of a mafia group Vijay's father was a part of and retired. Vijay was adopted by a police officer and as he grew up, he himself became a hot-blooded policeman. Vijay does not remember Teja. He only vaguely remembers the murderer's golden chain with a white horse hanging on it.

That's the story of Prakash Mehra's Zanjeer, an action-packed drama and one of the first films which shot the leading actor Amitabh Bachchan to fame. Zanjeer is an entertaining movie, and the story is interesting and well told. The direction is also pretty good. The characters are well-written. Bachchan's character is that of a very serious and uncompromising young man who takes crime as a personal affront and is thus often put in trouble with his superiors.

The film has several actors supporting Bachchan, including Jaya Bhaduri, his real-life future-wife, who plays the sassy and lovely Mala. The chemistry between the two is wonderful as always. Pran, also an actor who frequently collaborated with Bachchan, plays Sher Khan, a kind-hearted, brave and smart man who befriends Vijay in some unusual circumstances and supports him in every step throughout the film. Om Prakash also appears in a small but important role of a drunkard who is also Vijay's informant.

Bachchan is excellent as Vijay. It's easy to see why this was a star-turning performance for this towering actor. He is restrained and inhibited and brilliantly displays his character's internal turmoil and fear. Jaya Bhaduri is absolutely charming and natural as Mala, and it's nice to see her transform so convincingly from a vivacious girl to a mature and supportive wife. Pran is brilliant in his rather unusual role. Om Prakash is good in his role of a traumatised man. Bindu makes her usual vamp act, and Ajit is okay as Teja.

Zanjeer is an enjoyable and well-made film. It is at times a bit unsettling and disturbing but it is generally well-executed, well-narrated and well-acted. The film's music is also very nice, though the cabaret number was a bit annoying. I liked it that no songs were given to Bachchan. It only contributed to his serious image in the film. In its favour it can also be said that the film is devoid of too much melodrama, though it is not very realistic in the last portions. Anyway, this is a good, classic Hindi movie, I recommend you to watch it.

As a child, Vijay witnesses the murder of his parents by their unscrupulous employer, worried that pops will spill the beans on his "spurious injections" business. As luck would have it, Vijay was hidden in a wardrobe at the time and all he sees of the killer is his golden chain, with a cute little plastic horse dangling from it.

20 years later, Vijay has morphed into Amitabh Bachchan and is a police officer, always in trouble with his superiors because of his tendency to take crime as a personal affront and use any means available to punish its perpetrators. He's a very serious and intense young man, haunted by nightmares of his parents murder.

Prior to 1973, the name Amitabh Bachchan was not revered amongst Indian cinema goers as it has been ever since. Indeed, Amitabh was considered to be box office poison at the time, and director Prakash Mehra was thought to have gone mad for choosing him as the star in his new film Zanjeer. History appears to be on Mehra's side, for Zanjeer was a resounding success and created the "Angry Young Man" image for Amitabh Bachchan that dominated Indian cinema for the next decade.

Zanjeer follows the same pattern as many of Amitabh's films - or rather, many of his films follow the pattern of Zanjeer, I guess. Amitabh has proven himself a very versatile actor, but it is the driven intensity he brings to roles such as this that made him Bollywood's undisputed king. Driven by a rage he cannot release, he tears up the screen and the bad guys but remains vulnerable and easy to empathise with.

Bachchan is joined by some interesting characters - the larger than life good-bad guy Tiger played by Pran, and the sassy gypsy girl played by Jaya Bhaduri, who was Bachchan's love interest and later his real-life wife. Unfortunately the bad-bad guy is less charismatic and interesting than he might have been - he is cold and cruel, but not as "villainous" as he might have been.

I don't know just how original Zanjeer was at the time of its release... it seems to follow a pretty conventional formula, but the impression I get is that it largely created this formula. Perhaps similar plots were covered before, but I can't imagine anybody filling such a role as well as Amitabh. Certainly Zanjeer was a runaway success, and a profoundly influential film.

Sadly, in this case 'first' does not mean 'best'. Although it's certainly a solid film, it's not as well scripted as other films along similar lines, and Amitabh doesn't have the cocky confidence that he would quickly develop and employ so effectively in his numerous star roles. I guess everybody involved was still finding their feet a little, so it's not surprising that the elements presented here would be improved on in later films.

The conclusion I draw is that ZANJEER is not the best starting point on an Amitabh adulation path, but is definitely worth picking up once such a path has been a little trodden in.

My enjoyment of the film was doubtless hampered somewhat by the DVD presentation, which is clearly heavily cropped - most obviously at the bottom of the screen, where a good 20% must be missing. This was probably done to get rid of subtitles burnt into the print used for mastering, but unfortunately you lose a lot along with the subs - people's mouths during close-ups, for instance. I think it was also cropped at the sides, possibly to preserve aspect ratio. It may even have been a 4:3 film originally though, cropped to more than 1.85:1. Whilst this cropping (and general print wear and tear) do not ruin the film, it's definitely an impediment to full appreciation.

This hard-hitting film is my favourite for many reasons: -powerful performance by amitabh (laughs twice in the movie) -train murder scene which deserves putting Prakash Mehra up there with the all time director greats. Also Mehra has a penchant for location shooting and you get to see some of the dark sides of the mumbai locale. -esoteric motifs and hints strewn all over the movie('Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool') -Teja the bad guy is convincingly portrayed by Ajit -The unending quest for justice and it's bittersweet resolutions -The theme of love vs. revenge All these were amplified in Mehra's second classic 'Muqaddar ka Sikandar' In short it is rewarding viewing!

Zanjeer (1973) : Brief Review -

Indian cop drama gets gritty and intense like never before. Amitabh Bachchan was coming from soft roles, and it must have been a shocking experience for the audience to see him in such an intense role, and that too in a masala-driven cop's avatar. The cop dramas in Bollywood or Indian cinema have always believed in keeping things massy and preferred revenge as the main tool behind the anger of the character. Zanjeer is also based on the same lines, with an additional touch of gritty character, which was mostly seen in Hollywood's western dramas back then. For our audiences, a cop movie meant a simple action masala flick, and the equation hasn't changed till date. Be it Singham, Dabangg, or Rowdy Rathore, you see diversity in the screenplay and the characters because the writers don't want to take a risk. Zanjeer took that risk in the peak era of masala movies and turned out to be a successful film. That's why it should be hailed forever. It has also inspired many mainstream theories, but the ideological metaphor of Vijay's character remains unmatched. In the above-mentioned films, you'll see a cop behaving like a child in a few scenes or becoming comical for a while, but you don't see that in Inspector Vijay Khanna's character. The seriousness of being on duty or being traumatized around corruption or past memories has to be highlighted, and Zanjeer did that so well. Amitabh Bachchan plays that angry young officer's role, and in the 10-15 minutes you know what kind of material he is. Pran plays one of the best roles ever written and portrayed in any cop movie in history. Be it his dialogues, action, attitude, or even that joyful dance of friendship, everything is top notch. Salim-Javed's screenplay looked fantastic, even though a few things seemed to be borrowed from classic Western material. Jaya Bachchan was more fun as a chatterbox than a responsible woman. Mehra must be on fire from inside while making this one.

RATING - 7/10*

By - #samthebestest.