No spark,no sizzle

Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag
Direction: Ram Gopal Varma
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgan, Sushmita Sen, Mohanlal
Rating: *

Ram Gopal Varma's greatest achievement with 'Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag' is that it makes you treasure Ramesh Sippy's 'Sholay' even more. It is not a copy of 'Sholay', it isn't even a caricature; it is a dumbing-down to such a degree that there is not one memorable character, not one scene that stays with you, not one dialogue you would want to repeat. It has no soul, no heart and most certainly no mind.

Action shifts to the city where a gangster Babban (Amitabh Bachchan, slow speaking, lip smacking lech who kills more of his own people than the enemy) wants a piece of prime property on the seashore. He has a personal vendetta going with Inspector Narsimha (Mohanlal, speaking halting Hindi with all the wrong pauses) who had killed his (Babban's) younger brother in a shootout.

The inspector has been forced to leave the force after Babban amputated his fingers in revenge; he now vows to protect the land and kill Babban. The killings on either side continue unabated till the inspector hires two layabouts Heero (Ajay Devgan, disinterested) and Raj (Prashant Raj, awful) to continue the fight for him at which point there are more bullets expended than probably both the World Wars put together.

On the way, the film finds time to meander down Romance Row. Heero falls for Ghungroo (Nisha Kothari, wearer of minimal clothing and displaying equally minimal acting prowess), Mumbai's only female auto rickshaw driver while Raj is interested in the inspector's widowed sister-in-law Devi (Sushmita Sen with layers of pancake, very unattractive).

Strangely, even though there are several confrontations between Babban and Heero and Raj, they constantly escape from one another, Babban even stopping to indulge in some more lecherous activities with the item girl (Urmila Matondkar, crass and obscene) doing the 'Mehbooba' number.

'RGV Ki Aag' is undoubtedly one of the worst gangster movies made in the country including those that figure in the B-grade and C-grade classification. The wonder is the number of A-grade actors who actually agreed to work in this piece of nonsense.