Yugandhar

Yugandhar review:

A lesser known and underrated dacoit drama; Yugandhar was directed by 'Tezaab' director N. Chandra and featured Mithun Chakraborty in one of the finest performances of his career. He played an aam villager called Krishna who has no choice but to turn dacoit after an unscrupulous foreign returned thakur (Mangal Dhillon) usurps the entire village land in connivance with the district collector (Dilip Tahil), opportunist zamindar (Paresh Rawal) and top cop (Kiran Kumar).

N. Chandra's landscape shots and crowd scenes were spectacular to watch. The Rajasthan locales were amazingly captured on celluloid. The ever charming Sangeeta Bijlani was cast as Paresh Rawal's daughter who loves Krishna and then rebels to become his accomplice cum wife. Johnny Lever got a meaty role and even a fight scene with Mithunda. Kabir Bedi was gracious as the kind hearted army man on duty. Om Shivpuri's voice as the Police Commissioner was dubbed after his death.

On the flipside, the film was overlong especially the song sequences. Laxmikant Pyarelal had composed amazing score for Chandra's Tezaab (1988) and Narsimha (1991) but the songs of Yugandhar were below average except for the 'Krishna aayega' number which had thoughtful lyrics. There was one more innovatively executed song where Mithun da challenges the proposal of Mangal Dhillon to buy the farm land. It was one of a kind concept but again, the tune was quite ordinary!! Another sore point was Mangal Dhillon's casting as the main villain and ideally, Kiran Kumar should have done that role.

Nevertheless, Yugandhar had many positive things going for it including a massive hype and was expected to be another blockbuster like Tezaab!! Unfortunately, it released in the first week of January 1993 right in midst of the communal riots which rocked India (particularly the all important Mumbai territory) after Babri Masjid demolition. Most of Mumbai was under curfew that time which severely impacted the film's box office prospects and it was declared a box office flop even with its tax free status in many states.

Today, Chandra is known for Ankush (1986), Pratighaat (1987) and Tezaab (1988). Yugandhar had the potential to enter that success list but alas..!!

Regards, Sumeet Nadkarni.

I have seen lot of movie about revolution in Hindi cinema but there lot of people follow the hero of different groups having different problems which is quite difficult but in this movie a hero(Mithun) make people relies that if they loose there land what can be there life turn and than the fight begun. For me its an excellent movie but must seen with lot of thinking behind. The story is good and Mithun is done a gr8 job and I loved this movie. here we can see that both hero and villain both are quite intelligent. In this movie many phase of revolution is shown such as power corrupt his brother.There is a song in the movie which hero and villain puts there points in front of people in very interesting manner.