Kala patthar is one of the other movies of yashchopra that didn’t do all that well at the box office, although it wasn’t a flop either, the film came out when amitabh was at the top spot in the late 70’s.
Kala patthar is a true story in 1975 the chasanala charcoal mine got flooded with water in which 572 workers were caught.
The films stars- amitabh bachchan, shatrughan sinha, shashi kapoor, prem chopra, neetu singh, parveen babi and raakhe.
Given a name coward for abandoning his ship full of 300 passengers captain vijay singh (amitabh) is discharged and faces public humiliation and is thrown out of the house by his parents. Nowhere to go and alone in life he takes up a job in a distant coal mine and works as a labror just to keep himself alive, but he is unable to forget his past.
ravi (shashi kapoor) is in charge of the coal mine, he mine is owned by dhanraj seth (prem chopra) who is poorly equipped with less medical supplies and no facilites for the miners and their families. Ravi’s notices that the mine is made in a potential death trap by it’s owners, he tries to alert the management, but he is fired from the job when he joins froces with the workers and vijay in order to save their lives of the minors and fight the establishment.
Mangal(shatrughan sinha) is a escaped convict who is looking for a place to hide from the police, mangal and vijay have problems first getting along with each other, but later on mangal joins hands with ravi and vijay.
Sudha(raakhe) plays a part of a doctor in the factory who falls in love with vijay, anita (parveen babi) who falls in love with an honest worker ravi. shanno( neetu singh) changes mangal from a hardened criminal into a good human being.
Then the lives of the coal miners and their families face a catastrophe as water has forced it’s way into one of the tunnels endangering the lives of more then 500 people. All are caught in a tunnel full of water, where vijay, ravi and mangal has to save them all.
The technical side of the movie was good and the sets and the makeups made the movie look for real to life. Yash chopra made kala patthar a memorable movie though glamouros love story and an action film.
The music by rajesh roshan is also pretty good sungh by kishore kumar, lata mangeshkar, mohd raffi and mohinder kapoor. Janeman tum kamal karti ho is sung great by kishore kumar, ek raasta hai zindagi both by lata and kishore is also a good song and I also like the song bahun mein teri by mohammad raffi.
Performancewise- amitabh bachnan carries of his young angry man image in this film as well and does a fine job, anger in his eyes and confidence in his actions delivers minimum words and still makes an impact. Shashi kapoor as usual as the side hero does a great job he was never a bad actor and there has to be some good song in his film, I still say haseena man jayegi was his best film and performance. Neetu singh does a good job, raakhe doesn’t have that much role but goes along with role given. PArveen also doesn’t have a lenghty role. Prem chopra as the villain is great as usual, without villains in the 70’s movies were a weakfare but with prem chopra as the villain you had t o watch it.
I thought the film belonged to shatrughan sinha who gives one of his best performances in this film, amitabh stopped working with him after the film naseeb, because shatrughan sinha was getting the same response from the audience as was amitabh, most people don’t know but shatrughan sinha was the original chocie of playing vijay in the film deewar. Perhaps he’s one of the few actors who made it from being a villain to a hero, but he was better being a villain I thought.
The teal stall talk between amitabh and shatrughan sina the porbably one of the most hard hitting talks between two heroes in bollywood.
famous dialogues from the film
Yeh koyle ki khaan ek ajgar hai seth sahab jo roz unginath logon ko nigalkar usse peeskar jism se khoon ka ek ek katra choos kar ek laash ke roop mein ugal deta hai.
Pain is my destiny and I can’t avoid it.
mangal nam hai mera aur duniya mein aisa koi jail nahin bana jahan se mangal ne udaan nahin mari ho.