Trishul

Review By Kamal K

Trishul - produced by noted producer Gulshan Rai and directed by Yash Chopra - relied primarily on Amitabh Bachchan's simmering intensity and volcanic angst. He played Vijay, a man with a mission to get even with his biological dad R. K. Gupta (Sanjeev Kumar) who had ditched his mother (Waheeda Rehman) to marry a wealthy heiress. Vijay's revenge is not physical but rather an emotional one wherein he wants to destroy his father's business empire. Vijay even conspires to win over Sheetal (Hema Malini) whom his R. K. Gupta's legitimate son and Vijay's step bro Shekhar (Shashi Kapoor) is in love with.

Salim Javed's script wasn't perfect - it had its share of cinematic liberties like a young engineer Vijay with no money or clout becoming a top businessman almost in a jiffy to take on the might of an established business tycoon like R. K. Gupta. But the audience chose to overlook these fallacies only due to Bachchan's charisma and star power to pull off the role of Vijay - an otherwise anti-hero who touches your heart just by his belief and conviction in what he is doing.

Yash Chopra's direction was extraordinary and this is my personal favourite from his illustrious resume - a film he chose to remake again as Vijay (1988) with Anil Kapoor in Bachchan's role but that film turned out to be a box office dud.

Not many know that Gulshan Rai wasn't too happy at the trial show held when the film was around seventy percent complete. Yash Chopra too agreed with his producer that there was something missing in Trishul and he huddled up with Salim Javed to finetune the screenplay further. Amitabh's ambulance wala fight scene was added to the plot which later became the film's highlight. That bit of re-work benefited the film tremendously and it ended up being the second highest grosser of 1978 after Prakash Mehra's Muqaddar Ka Sikandar.

Trishul earned a Filmfare award nomination for Bachchan which he lost to himself for his performance in Chandra Barot's Don (1978). As the saying goes, One should only compete with oneself!