I will meet Matru, BIjlee and Mandola on Saturday, but as of now, let’s meet ACP Rathore. Don’t Mind!
“Kya Thakur tere ko kitni baar bulaya, tu aata nahi hai”
Long back, when I started writing reviews in mouthshut, I have written a small review on the music of this film, but never have written a film review on this 90s classic film named ‘Sarfarosh’ (1999). Few days back I was watching ‘Gangajal’ on TV, and in the line remembered this one too. Whereas ‘Gangajal’ has Ajay Devgn in the role of strict SP of Tejpur, here we have perfectionist Aamir Khan in the role of ACP. Ajay Devgn looks perfect in the role he has given in Gangajal, but I was doubtful about Aamir playing the role he has given, when I was going to watch this movie in theater, because of his physique at that time, but he was a perfectionist from long back, and he acted so nicely that we all still used to remember that role of his. 7 years of research by the director of movie John Matthew Matthan who was debuting in this movie made this movie memorable. And not only Aamir, two more well-defined characters made this movie memorable, let’s see.
Film opens with display of illegal arms smuggling route which starts from Pakistan and went deep into Indian jungles through the way of Rajasthan, Mumbai and many other places. The final user of guns – Veeran (Govind Namdeo), the cinematic role of the real-life ‘Veerappan’. The middle men are – Sultan (Pradeep Rawat), Mirchi Seth (Akhilendra Mishra), Bala Thakur (Rajesh Joshi). Our film hero ACP Ajay Rathore (Aamir Khan) attended a ghazal concert of famous ghazal singer Gulfam Hassan (Naseeruddin Shah) and he met his love there, Seema (Sonali Bendre), she was the same girl who had a crush on him during college days, and we jumped to the flashbacks. And we come to know that due to Ajay’s elder brother murder and his father’s kidnap, he decided to join the police force and now he is ACP. In the search of notorious gangsters Sultan, Bala Thakur and Veeran, Ajay came to know the whole plot about the smuggling of arms into India and the person who is helping – its Gulfam Hassan, who was sent to Pakistan during partition, and has a Haweli in Rajasthan near the border which is used for hiding, packing and unpacking of arms. He included Ins. Salim (Mukesh Rishi) in his squad passing through wonderful conversational scenes between them, and went for the kill. RESULT: we all know.
The film is packed with powerful performances, and these 3 roles comes on the top – Aamir Khan as ACP, as we all know him as a perfectionist, he looked good here too, with a great performance. Then came the performance of another perfectionist and a veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah. He did the role of Ghazal-singer-cum-traitor so beautifully that you can say that this movie define villainous role with a new touch. Then comes the performance of Mukesh Rishi, who has done a positive role here, though he is famous for negative roles, but here he has shown the skills that if you get a good role, whatever your image is, people will like you in that different role also. Characterization was perfect and well-defined, and based on real life characters. The dialogues and scenes which happen between Ajay and Salim are the soul of this movie. What a story! Thoroughly researched and true to the fact, full points to the debutante director John Matthan. And he directed too good. Though he was not so successful in his career, had only made 1 more movie ‘Shikhar’ but he certainly showed that he has the talent. He also did the screenplay, totally satisfied with it. Editing was top-class by Jethu Mundul. Scene-by-scene perfected and supported by brilliantly written dialogues (Hriday Lani, Pathik Vats).
Art direction (Kesto Mondal) was superb, real location, real sets, supported by other items, and wonderfully shot (Vikas Sivaraman), which shows the movie true to the settings and backdrop. Music was also the plus-points for the movie which was not a romantic movie but an action-terrorism background movie. Jatin-Lalit were the musician, and the album has 6 tracks. Best composition was the soulful Ghazal “Hoshwalo ko khabar kya”, written by Nida Fazli and sung by the Ghazal maestro Jagjit Singh. Other best composition was ‘Zindagi maut na ban jaye’ aptly penned by Israr Ansari, and sung by Roopkumar Rathore and Sonu Nigam. As you all remember the other beautiful song sung by this hit pair ‘Sandese Aate Hain’ from the 1997 flick ‘Border’. Other songs included 2 romantic tracks ‘Is deewane ladke ko’ having nice shayari lines, written by Sameer, and sung beautifully by Alka Yagnik and Aamir Khan, and the sensuous ‘Jo Haal dil ka’ (Sameer, Kumar Sanu. Alka Yagnik).
This was one great movie, and can be counted in the list of greatest Bollywood movies of all-times, deserves a part of your library and watch n number of times. Classics are rarely made, so I will give this movie a rating of 5/5.
GRuchirG.
“Meri baat suniye sir, fir kabhi kisi Salim se mat kehna ki ye mulk uska ghar nahi”