Aaag Hi Aag
Subroto is back! After a long time, he decided to take his time and
wrote a long email to me with the description of this great movie he just
saw, while he was trying to get over his jetlag. But, let me not talk too
much, as some prof at IISc said, let's
hear it from the hoarse's mouth:
[I] am writing to tell you about this totally awesome movie i
saw called Aaag Hi Aag (notice the difference in spelling
from the more
familiar but equally awesome chunkey pandey masala-fest Aag Hi
Aag)
starring the redoubtable kaiser of kool, our beloved mithunda. here
are a
few highlights from the film
1) the film brings together a veritable who's who of bollywood has-beens
and never-weres. some of the glittering stars in the line up - kiran
kumar, ranjeet, raj kiran, macmohan, laxmikant berde and suresh chatwal.
the movie also stars a (believe it or not) johnny lever impersonator!!
2) in one scene, all the bad guys (kiran kumar, raj kiran, ranjeet etc.)
have a meeting with the vilaayti don played by some morose looking
guy
with bleached skin. bob christo and tom alter were perhaps too expensive
for the producers. under normal hindi filmi circumstances, the dialogue
in
this scene would be in (broken) english or the vilaayti don would speak
broken hindi. the former option is out of the question for the director
here since people from the cow-belt demographic the film caters to
(and
perhaps even the actors themselves) don't speak any angrezi, not even
the
tooti phooti variety. the latter option is not exercised for some strange
reason but the director comes up with an ingenious solution. the actors
suddenly start speaking hindi with a phirang accent while talking to
the
angrez. lines like "hum toomko heera daydayga mr. robert lekin hum
chuhta
haaye ki hamaara maal jaaldi mil jaaye" and the vilaayti don just nods.
3) kiran kumar is the main villain (very imaginatively called tiger)
and
has a den with high-tech equipment - two computers with a couple of
girls
furiously typing away on keyboards ostensibly connected to them. the
only
catch - the screen savers are on even while the girls are typing. mithunda
and jackie shroff (yes, he's in it too. aajkal rozi roti ke liye kya
kya
karna padta hai) are the good guys and they too have their own high-tech
surveillance room with a computer. guess what's on the screen - the
game
wolfenstein!!
4) kiran kumar turns into a deformed human being for a short while for
not
much reason. it's apparently a result of too many plastic surgeries
performed on him. the transformation is straight out of any ramsay
film.
5) one has to remember that most of mithunda's movies are made on a
very
tight budget (BPL productions as sajid khan described them, below poverty
line productions) and the producers have to cut corners all the time.
one
scene has kiran kumar talking over the wireless to suresh chatwal or
ranjeet. the producers couldn't afford to get a set of headphones with
an
attached microphone and got only a pair of headphones. the ever
resourceful kiran kumar, uses one speaker of the headphones as a speaker
and the other as a microphone.
6) the piece de reseistance - mithunda's wife is raped and killed early
on
in the film. he is reminded a song he used to sing with her while thinking
about her. another girl is in love withm ithunda and he initially keeps
shooing her away because of the memery of his dear departed wife.
eventually, he relents and starts feeling for her as well. the girl
in one
scene imagines herself singing the same song with mithunda that he
used to
sing with his dead wife. the lyrics of this haunting melody -
.......
DO NOT MISS THIS FILM.
raju, the next time you go that indian video store, get this movie if
they
have it.
subroto