Vijay is directed by yash chopra and happens to be his most underrated movie, in my opinion, it’s not mentioned like his other movies, but when you watch this movie it’s a very good, with a incredible performance by anil kapoor and saaed jafrey, anupam kher. The film came out in 1988, and I think didn’t do that well at the box office, but it was a good movie.
The film stars, ANil kapoor, rishi kapoor, meenakshi sheehsdari, hema malini, sonam, rajeskhanna, anupamkher, shakti kapoor, raj babbar, mausmi chatterji and gulshan grover.
The film starts with widowed lala yodhraj bhalla (anupam kher) who lives with his daugher suman (hema malini), son shashi raj ( raj babbar) and both of his children are of marriagble age. Yodraj gets a shock when he finds out that his daughter suman has fallen in love with a low wage employee ajit bhardawaj (rajesh khanna) and refuses to give consent for marriage. He wants his daughter to marry a guy who is in his league.
Suman and ajit gets married without his permisson in a simple wedding and suman moves to ajit’s house, where she soon gets pregnant and gives a birth to a son who they name vicky. Yodhraj gets a another shock when his son shashi raj tells him that he would like to marry rita (mausmi chatterji) who comes from a poor family. Yodhraj asks shashi to go out of town for a business meeting on shashi’s own private jet plane. With shashiraj out of town yodhraj goes to rita’s house and aks her never to see shashiraj again and leaves a blank check for her. Shashiraj gets killed in a plane crash, and rita get’s pregnant and has a son. A guilt ridden suman moves back into her father’s house with her son vicky and leaves ajit alone.
Twenty years have now been passed, yodhraj now lives with suman and vicky (rishi kapoor). Arjun (anil kapoor) lives with inder sen gujral (saaed jafrey). vicky and arjun becomes best friends, but yodhraj and inder gujral are enemies. On the other side arjun finds out that he isn’t gujra’s son, and his mother rita is still alive, who dies while seeing arjun for the first time. Arjun finds out that yodhraj is his grandfather, and arjun wants revenge. Yodhraj takes everything gujral has and gujra dies of shock, where now arjun and vicky becomes enemies.
Arjun also finds the blank check that yodhraj had given to rita, after he takes her things. One day while paying salaries to his staff yodhraj is told that there is no money in the bank, the check that he gave rita 25 years ago is cashed in the bank today. Arjun makes yodhraj pay and makes him realizes his mistakes, where his daughter suman and vicky leave the house and starts living with ajit again.
The direction by yash chopra is good as usual, He is able to get good performances his starcast as usual, but this time the music isnt that good, it’s simply ok but not the good tunes like chandni, silsila, dil to pagal hai, darr, veer zara etc. This was yash chopra’s second film with anil kapoor after mashaal.
The music is by shiv hari badal pe chalke aa sung by lata and suresh wadkar is pretty good, zindagi har janam is alright. I liked the song tera karam teri hi vijay hai.
Perfmancewise- I think anil kapoor gives the best performance of all, his anger towards anupam kherin the end and how he drives him nuts, is worth a watch. This reminds you sequences between amitabh and sanjeev kumar in the film trishul. Anupam kher gives a great performance as usual and this won him a supporting actor award as well. Saaed jaffrey is a suprise in the film, he gives his best performance in this film in my opinion. The girls don’t have anything to do meenakshi as usual is with anil kapoor. sonam is with rishi kapoor she sings a couple of songs. Shakti kapoor and gulshan grover as usual the baddie does a good job. hema malini rajesh khanna are competent. mausmi chateerji as usual is good