Mrityudaata

Farida Jalal was born in 1950, and when I see a film where Mrs. Jalal plays a mother to a visibly aging Amitabh Bachchan, eight years her senior, I know there's something wrong with this film. This kind of disrespect, not to say contempt for the Indian audiences is quite characteristic of many films of the times. It is especially disappointing coming from Mr. Bachchan, a great actor who happens to be an impressively intelligent man, who I can't believe was not aware of how pathetic everything here looks.

Bachchan gets another opportunity to play a hero, the problem is that being a hero in commercial Hindi films was only preserved for action films, preferably bad action films. And this one is indeed it. We see an aging star fighting with great energy dozens of goons, and it really wavers between funny and a little embarrassing. He reminds one of Leslie Nielsen in The Naked Gun. But this is not a comedy, not an intentional at least, and Bachchan is a great actor, which makes the entire thing the more unwatchable.

But Bachchan is really not bad. He does well in moments where he is required to act. He is just miscast, and it's not the same thing. He does play a man closer to his age, but he also gets to play the younger version of it, and that's where the problem. Cast opposite him is Dimple Kapadia, whose radiant energy early on is wonderful just as her outbursts later on are strangely overdone. What made an actor of her stature do this film is a mystery. I guess Mehul Kumar thought he'd recreate the success of Krantiveer. Obviously, he didn't.