'Agneepath': Another botched remake

Remakes are notoriously difficult to pull off, so much so that one wonders why people even try in the first place. On the one hand you have something like RGV Ki Aag where the director, in trying to be original and edgy, does to Sholay what Gabbar Singh did to Thakur, obliterating its legacy and cutting off its hands. Or you have something like the Pyscho remake where the director Gus Van Sant is so reverential to the original that he ends up mimicking every scene, in essence making a colour version of a black and white classic.

Which is why I was more than slightly apprehensive when a remake of Agneepath was announced, Agneepath being one of my favourite movies growing up. Yes I know.

In this age of ‘Tomatina’ and ‘Desi Boyz’, where macho is defined by beef-cake muscles on meterosexual men (yes I am talking about the John Abraham-types) and male bonding defined by the girlie-girl coochie-cooching of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, it has become fashionable to diss the original Agneepath as a B-grade movie of questionable aesthetic value, more desi liquor than Chardonnay. But for my generation, Agneepath was pure celluloid testosterone, veer ras at its most elemental. Helmed by visionary director Mukul Anand, Agneepath stood on the pillars of its TNT-packed dialogues, a memorably suave Danny as Kancha Cheena, and of course, the explosively volatile Vijay Dinanath Chauhan, Amitabh Bachchan’s last angry man role.  Well past his prime then, Amitabh was still perfect as the doomed anti-hero galloping towards an appointment with death. 

The defiantly arrogant demeanour in front of Gaitonde sahab in the police station. The quivering lips. And those dialogues. Oh, those dialogues. Over-dramatic you say? Sure. But then, so is Scarface, and that does not make it any less the great.

One would have hoped the new Agneepath would try to stay true to the spirit of the original, somewhat like BBC’s re-telling of the Sherlock Holmes saga, while changing everything else. It does not. Hrithik Roshan, despite the Greek God body, his undeniably strong screen presence and sincere efforts, fails to capture the essence of Vijay Dinanath Chauhan’s uber-masculinity. For one, he is not given a single strong line. It’s not that thunderous dialogue-driven movies do not work anymore — The Dirty Picture and Dabangg are proof that they do. And even with the lines he does get, he is unable to give them that goose-bump-inducing edge that Amitabh did so naturally. The director tries to cover up for this by crafting violent scenes with blood and flying blades, but three buckets of fake red cannot make up for the lack of punch in the script and delivery.

One may argue that Hrithik consciously plays the character in a radically different fashion, but then why call it Agneepath when the spirit of the original is not respected? 

If there is any plus to the new Agneepath, it is the new character of Rauf Lala played with delightful avarice by Rishi Kapoor. But whatever menace he brings to screen is punctured by the new Kancha Cheena, a cross between the Hulk and Voldemort. Ruling over Mandwa like Dong did over Dongri-La, Sanjay Dutt’s character is neither nudge-nudge-wink-wink funny like Dong’s nor can it be taken seriously, cartoonishly cardboard as it is. And this breaks the dramatic conflict that was at the heart of the original Agneepath — the new Vijay Dinanath Chauhan is too sensitive and too underplayed while the villain simply a caricature.

In conclusion, an emotional and stoic man looking for revenge against his father’s killers could have worked as an original movie. But not as a remake of Agneepath. The larger-than-life legacy of the original is way too powerful.  

— Arnab Ray is the author of The Mine