I had promised all my friends and acquaintances that I would watch Mr. Bachchan’s starrer, 1973 Zanjeer before I watch the newer version. Yesterday, when one of my close acquaintances offered me to accompany him to watch Zanjeer 2013 at his expense, I wanted to watch the older one before I watch the Ram Charan starrer flick. I came home from our adda(local hangout place) agreeing to watch Zanjeer 2013. As I wanted to watch the earlier version first, I checked in YouTube if there was the classic Zanjeer and as I could find one, I watched it completely and messaged my friends on WhatsApp the following words - "The story of 1973 Zanjeer is only average. but for 70’s probably it was great. lets check out the presentation of the same story tomorrow." As it was late in the night that I watched the classic Zanjeer and had to get up early to watch the very first, morning show of this flick(as decided by my acquaintance who paid for my ticket price), I had very little time to sleep and I was very soon in the Gopalan Cinemas: Arch Mall, Bangalore to check out this latest release.
Except for a few changes here and there, the crux of the Salim-Javed plot is same as the old one. The movie starts with the nightmares of the protagonist and opens up to projecting an honest, aggressive and seemingly-arrogant ACP Vijay Khanna who is repeatedly transferred over 17 stations all across AP in a time span of 5 years. He is now transferred to Mumbai and when asked by the commissioner as to the reason for his many transfers, Vijay states that he has been so honest and sincere in his work that he never had any time for introspection. Vijay is shown as an anti-establishment, value-driven cop who has sincere interests in change and evolutionary reformation by his direct efforts in uprooting evil. Mala has come from US to attend one of her Facebook friends wedding and gets embroiled in the story of Vijay’s life when she is emotionally pushed to be a witness of one of the gruesome crimes that she has seen. Sher Khan is running undercover, illegal business on the seemingly car dealers enterprise and gets close to Vijay, becoming his friend after initial animosity. Sher Khan is now a reformed man and a close, trusted, companion of the ACP. Teja is the main antagonist representing traits of a womanizer who is brutal enough to stick to any means to be in power and is single-handedly controlling the oil mafia. How Vijay is suspended for alleged torture to death of one of Teja’s men(who was killed by conspiracy by another Taja’s man), several clash between the protagonist and the antagonist, Vijay discovering that Teja was the man who killed his parents and he eventually bringing an end to Teja’s life and oil mafia forms the rest of the story.
I read in the news somewhere yesterday that this is a dream debut for a southern star like Ram Charan which is obviously not true. He does shine in his part of performance but the movie package in itself is not a well deserving one for a star of his caliber. Sanjay Dutt plays Sher Khan’s character to the hilt. There is not a scene involving him that you would ever be bored of. Priyanka is seemingly playing a supporting role as an arm candy to Vijay. One of my all time favorites, Prakash Raj does tickle our funny bone at times but surely wasn’t great playing a villain. Atul Kulkarni playing the role of a crime reporter does good justice to his role and I have no comments on Mahie Gill as Mona, Teja’s girl friend.
I am not a guy who compares different products, but its mostly been the case that I never seem to like a remake and Zanjeer is no different. I appreciated the plot and screenplay of the classic Zanjeer for its age and time and to have an ordinary screenplay at our time for a newer version is unsatisfactory. In a theater of over 100 people watching this movie, I heard gushing and disappointing sounds very frequently. Most of us were doing something or the other with our mobiles. At the end of the film while we were walking out of the cinema hall, one of the guys was screaming at the other person questioning him why he had got him to this flick. Another person was mocking the last song "Mumbai Ke Hero" by stating to hell with the Mumbai hero as he is the Bangalore hero. Songs were not pleasing to hear, the plot had a number of unnecessary lengthy fights which needed heavy editing, movie was pacing at snails pace and was not at all engrossing and this being a remake, I presume most of us knew that the story was absolutely predictable. If someone else can sponsor your ticket and you have a lot of time like I do, I think you can watch this once. Let me put a mask of an extraordinarily generous man and give this a **1/2 stars.