Bollywood's muscle men return

Bodyguard. Superhero. Cop. Spy. Ruffian. These are the roles you’ll see 40-something superstars donning in the coming months. After what seems like an eternity since the time when the action hero ruled the roost, there now seems to be enough to last us a while.

The dishum-dishum-packed ’70s and ’80s made way for the multiplex and NRI-targeted mush-filled ’90s, with the hero turning into the suave, rich loverboy, wooing girls — and audiences — with charm rather than brawn. Sunny Deol was probably the last of our so-called action heroes, tasting success with Gadar in 2001, before his market plummeted with non-starters. But while Deol is himself now opting for comic and romantic roles after Yamla Pagla Deewana’s success earlier this year, it’s the superstars who have started taking on roles of larger-than-life action heroes.

Salman Khan’s Ready, which released on Friday, is only the tip of the iceberg. There’s Bodyguard in the pipeline, followed by Kick, both of which are south remakes. Shah Rukh Khan gets into ‘costume’ for Ra.One, which will be followed by the sequel to Don. Ajay Devgn and Akshay Kumar, who started their careers with action films before moving to drama, romance and eventually, comedies, are back to flexing their muscles in Singham and Rowdy Rathore respectively. Even Aamir Khan, who plays a cop in his next film, will get into hardcore action mode for the third installment of the Dhoom series. And Saif Ali Khan’s Agent Vinod will see him play a James Bond-styled desi spy.

Lost action hero
Time was when the ‘multiplex film’ hadn’t become a staple of Bollywood, and the action hero was what the audience rooted for. From Amitabh Bachchan (not just a hero, but an angry young one at that), Dharmendra and Vinod Khanna to Mithun Chakraborthy, Sanjay Dutt, Sunny Deol and Jackie Shroff, your stardom was determined by the number of goons you could bash up at one go.

But a new set of directors (Barjatya, Chopra, Johar in that order) in the ’90s gave us the chocolate boy hero. The three Khans made the most of this, emerging as the superstars of a changing, more urbanised target audience ushered in by the multiplex culture.

But while ‘multiplex films’ raked in the moolah, the single screen audience began to feel left out. It was the success of Ghajini that showed films could have a pan-India appeal. In the remake of the Tamil hit, Aamir Khan — in a departure from his other films — bulked up for the role of a killing machine thirsting for revenge. The film was the first to gross more than Rs100 crore at the box office, impressing multiplex audiences while also giving the single screen audience a reason to cheer.

“The big box office returns at multiplexes made our filmmakers blindly follow urban themes, but the success of films like Ghajini — and later Wanted and Dabangg — showed that such stories can also appeal to the multiplex audience,” says industry watcher Amod Mehra, adding that Dabangg reminded filmmakers that action films aren’t just a ‘single screen’ phenomenon.

Filmmaker Subhash Kapoor, who made the critically acclaimed Phas Gaye Re Obama (PGRO) that primarily did well at multiplexes, knows the importance of a film with a far-reaching appeal.

“Even a Dil Chahta Hai, which was lauded for its urban appeal, flopped in most states including Bihar, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. India is much more than the metros, a realisation that seems to have dawned on our filmmakers now,” he says.

Of course, multiplexes did bring new themes, fresh approaches and young filmmakers willing to experiment, resulting in a varied experience at the movies. A PGRO would have found the going tough years ago when the junta was not as open to watching different films as they are now. But even if the quality of films may have improved, the mass-appeal action film got lost somewhere.

Interestingly, the actors now reinventing the action hero themselves stayed away from the genre for the longest time. Aamir hadn’t acted in an action film in more than a decade before Ghajini. Salman may have done the odd action film, and was known for dropping his shirt in each of them, but his biggest hits before Wanted and Dabangg were romantic and comedy films. As for Devgn and Kumar, they tried their best to shed the action hero image they had acquired as young actors.

Although playing larger-than-life characters can hardly be termed as “reinventing” themselves, it seems like the now middle-aged superstars are seeking a way to capitalise on their nationwide appeal, and the revival of the action film is coming in handy. 

“Playing an action hero is a way of reminding audiences that you still have what it takes,” says Nandini Ramnath, Time Out Mumbai’s film writer.

“Most of all, an action hero represents vitality. Many of the stars seem to be playing larger-than-life versions of themselves, which is also a way of reminding audiences about the reasons they became stars in the first place.”

Mehra, however, believes that being above 40 would have been a deterrent for these actors — “most superheroes in the West are young actors” — but for the fact that the younger ones (like Ranbir Kapoor, Shahid Kapur, and Imran Khan), having been groomed in the multiplex culture, don’t quite have what it takes to pull off larger-than-life roles. “The harsh reality is that we only have these four-five ‘heroes’. At a time when the careers of these actors should be on a decline, more and more filmmakers want to work with them because, frankly, we face a huge shortage of action heroes.”

Looking south, aping West
The shortage isn’t restricted to the acting department. Bollywood is yet to produce a true-blue action film that is neither a remake of a southern film, nor what looks like a B-grade Hollywood film. Even Dabangg, which was an original story, couldn’t escape inspiration from the south in terms of action choreography.

Earlier though, Hindi films with revenge themes and cop dramas were a regular feature, many of them going on to do blockbuster business.

“We made good Hindi action films once upon a time, as did the southern film industry. But while they persisted with the genre throughout, thus evolving and improving vastly, Hindi action films find themselves without a voice due to a disconnect over two decades,” says Kapoor.

“Young Hindi scriptwriters, bred on a multiplex culture, feel action films don’t live up to the standards of filmmaking they believe in,” says Mehra.

“Writing a good action film that will appeal to the masses and satisfy the gentry at the same time is an art the current writers haven’t developed; hence the dependence on southern and Hollywood films.”

So, when can we expect to see a real Bollywood action film again? “Now that filmmakers are taking to the genre, we will hopefully be able to discover a style of our own,” says Kapoor.

“But that might take a few years.”