Dostana

One of the best performance by Bachan and sinha . Loved their acting , songs were the best part of the movie . Zeenat as good as well .

Best friends (Amitabh Bachan and Shatrughan Sinha) since childhood, a righteous cop and a lawyer who represents criminals in court become rivals when they fall for the same woman (Zeenat Aman).

An emotionally-charged action drama that benefits from the rivalry between Amitabh Bachan and Shatrughan Sinha- allegedly their friendship got frosty after this. Strange that this film touches upon friendship and jealousy and misunderstandings, and how the two friends override this problem. Of course, Prem Chopra causes most of the problems which leads to dishoom, dishoom and thrill a minute action. Loved the ending with the aircraft. You can tell the production is high, which paid off as the film was a big hit.

Great performances from Bachan, Shatrughan Sinha and Zeenat Aman are like a hefty anchor, driving simultaneously with the well-sculpted plot and crisply direction. Classic.

Dostana review :

Legendary director Raj Khosla's last box office success; Dostana had superstar Amitabh Bachchan and Shotgun (Shatrughan) Sinha vying for love and affection of the gorgeous Zeenat Aman. It was a staple Salim Javed script packed with all the masala ingredients of action, romance, emotions and dialogues. Having said that, I consider this to be one of their underwhelming effort as there were no punchlines or thrills as expected from the star writer-duo. Nevertheless, they got paid more than superstar Bachchan.

Vijay (Amitabh) and Ravi (Shotgun) are childhood buddies who become warring foes over the pretty Sheetal (Zeenat). Vijay is a cop while Ravi is the defence lawyer. Later, Vijay is accused of a murder and Ravi demands a night with Sheetal as his remuneration to bail him out.

Dostana took a good three years to complete mainly due to the untimely demise of its cinematographer Nariman Irani in 1978. Bachchan and Sinha's offscreen rivalry was much talked about in the media and that actually helped the movie to take a fantastic opening at the box office. Amrish Puri played a supporting baddie to the main villain Prem Chopra who is instrumental in creating rift between the two heroes. Pran was reliably effective as the police informer Tony who has his own past to tell...this character bears resemblance to his Michael from Amitabh Bachchan's Majboor (1974) - another Salim Javed script.

Dostana was the first production of Yash Johar who made many memorable films after this like Duniya (1984), Agneepath (1990) and Gumrah (1993) before his son Karan took over the mantle with Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998)... and made Dharma a top production house of Bollywood. Interestingly, Karan produced another Dostana in 2008 starring Amitabh's son Abhishek and John Abraham. The namesake movie was a gay comedy and had nothing to do with this Raj Khosla original.

Regards, Sumeet Nadkarni.

Raj Khosla @100!!! On the 100th birth anniversary of legendary film director I want to discuss one of my favs Khosla saab film of my childhood-the 1980 slickly made action cum triangle-DOSTANA!! The film was the first production of Yash Johar through Dharma production and had a great star cast of Amitabh-Zeenat-Shatrughan along with Pran, Prem Chopra, Helen and Amrish Puri. Raj Khosla presents another ace action film after the cult Mera Gaon Mera Desh. The USP of the film was with Bachchan in the lead. Salim-Javed were responsible for creating the angry young man image of Amitabh-Trishul, Kala Pathar etc. Along with these cult angry young man image films-it was Manmohan Desai's Parvarish who changed him to be a cool cop who is normally not angry. He is witty, is romantic at heart, gets emotional seldom but does lots of action.

Parvarish holds the distinction of changing Amitabh from an angry young man to an action star.

If you see DOSTANA you will see Salim-Javed charged to present Amitabh as an action hero in the mould of Parvarish and unlike their angry young man image (ofcourse the cult Sholay and DON were totally different).

Amitabh was pitted against another rival Shatrughan Sinha Bachchan was the cop without a uniform (other movies which took this thing later were-Aakhree Raasta and Geraftaar) and both the friends fall for Zeenat Aman (1981 Desai's Naseeb again had Amit-Shatru falling over one-woman Hema which leads to misunderstanding).

However, with Salim-Javed and Amitabh's combination a normal romantic triangle is the last thing u expect so there is plenty of action. The film was a big break for action master Veeru Devgan who composed some amazing fights in the movie. Amitabh's car chase, train chase and the excellently shot climax where he shot hanging from a helicopter made Amitabh a super cop.

DOSTANA probably can be said as the last big hit of Khosla saab and he is totally in form in this action film of 1980s. His command of medium is apt as he does tremendous justice to Salim-Javed's script and brought the best out of the starcast. Besides Amitabh, it was Shatrughan again who showed his screen presence in a shaded role. Zeenat got enough scope to shine as the bold glamorous heroine and Pran was in fine form in supporting role. The baddies Prem Chopra and Amrish Puri were superb as well. Music,starcast, romance, emotional scenes and ofcourse action was totally fit for this film and remains loved even till date.

This is one of Amitabh's classic top movie. Pran and Zeenat were exceptionally brilliant actors on screen. The dialogue by Jared Akhtar must be noted. The music composer Laxmikant did a great job composing some great music. Helen and other actors were also brilliant. A perfect movie to watch.