On one level, Khoon Pasina is an action-packed revenge saga with knockabout violence, some shoddy production values and (in the case of the abbreviated DVD) a rather incoherent narrative. It is also a fashion House of Horrors. Flared trousers of truly epic proportions are paired with some of the most ghastly clothes ever created. Even at a distance of 30 years and a continent or two, it's hard not to cringe at Vinod Khanna's wet-look leather two piece with leopard skin trim.
On another level, the film is alive with contradictions :
· the opening voice-over expresses patriotic sentiment - but this is a state that completely fails to protect its citizens from the deprivations of criminals; · a schoolteacher tells his pupils they are to become the lawyers, doctors, farmers etc. of the future. But the film's heroes are men who talk with their fists, lack any kind of regular employment and dispense vigilante justice with impunity; · we are led to admire the courage of those villagers who face down an armed thug but when one of the heroes lets a tiger out of its cage in the middle of a crowd (to impress a girl) we are supposed to view it as just jolly good fun; · loving ones mother is one thing - but trying to beat up your wife is not an acceptable way of proving it; · we are invited to deplore contractors who exploit their workers but when one of the heroes destroys a farm in pursuit of a criminal gang, there is no suggestion that he ought to apologise or compensate the owners.
On the acting front, the less said the better. Stacey Keach lookalike, Vinod Khanna, considers himself to be dead since losing his boyhood friend. His acting accords strongly with his self-perception - except during the action sequences which are wildly implausible.
You watch Amitabh Bachchan with morbid fascination. It's not the acting, it's those appalling clothes. Rekha cannot help but look gorgeous but has too little to do. Mercifully, by wearing traditional clothes, she is spared the worst sartorial excesses of her co-stars.
Despite all the above, I still found Khoon Pasina fun to watch and the moment when the two protagonists discover each other's true identity is a classic (albeit of a familiar kind).
