Ashanti
Director: Umesh Mehra
Music: R.D. Burman; Lyrics: Anand Bakshi
Year: 1982
Running Time: 2 hrs 41 minutes
A one-legged cop, two dead mothers and three
kung fu kicking babes. No, not a Bollywood Christmas carol, but just some
of the fun bits in this crazy action film from 1982. It’s my firm opinion
that Bollywood has neither enough dead mothers nor fighting femmes so it’s
quite rewarding to come across so much of it in one film. In the world
of Indian movies mothers are elevated to a state of godliness in which
they can do no wrong and that can get so annoying after a while - so getting
the opportunity to watch two of them kick the bucket under unusual melodramatic
circumstances made my day. But nothing compared to the pleasure of
seeing three females doing spins, somersaults, karate chops and kicks to
the heads of lots of bad guys.
Having immersed myself in Hong Kong films over
the past five years, one of the aspects of them that I have really come
to appreciate are the very strong female characterizations whether it be
a Brigitte Lin as the imperious Asia the Invincible or Carina Lau as a
tough bar hostess who would just as soon bust a bottle over your head as
not in “Girls without Tomorrow”. But what really sets cinematic women apart
in Hong Kong from any other film industry is their willingness to let them
go toe to toe physically with any man or group of men – a genre that took
on the name of “Girls with Guns” in the 1980’s but which had roots going
back to the 1930s and has consisted of literally hundreds of films that
spawned many female action stars such as Michelle Yeoh, Angela Mao, Moon
Lee and Yukari Oshima. Bollywood has no such tradition sadly. Women
characterizations can certainly be strong – but they generally fall into
stereotypical roles such as the strong-willed mother, the conniving vamp
or the heroine who will sacrifice for her man – but rarely does a woman
take a bottle to a man’s head. They would rather dance than fight. There
are a few exceptions that I have come across – Zeenat Aman as a revenge
seeking babe in “Don” and Kareena Kapoor as a warrior queen in “Asoka”
– but they are few and far between and certainly no actresses train specifically
for action films or use them as an entrée into the industry as they
did in Hong Kong. But here we have the pleasure of three lovely actresses
doing their best to be nearly convincing in this action mayhem film – with
the help needless to say of many stunt doubles!
Four men break into a bank and take off in car
and start giving each the high fives when they notice that police officer
Rajesh Khanna is right behind them. After a pretty terrific car chase through
the streets of Bombay, he forces their car to turn over and chases one
of them into a game arcade where Rajesh does a pretty good Dirty Harry
imitation and beats the fellow senseless and turns to the onlookers and
says “you heard him confess right”. The bad guys get back at him though
by having the beautiful Shabana Azmi show up at his house – with his mother
happily assuming this is his fiancé – to try to bribe him into letting
the guy he captured go – when he of course declines, she plants some of
the bank loot behind his couch. Later the cops show up, find the money,
arrest him and send him off to jail for three years. Oh, and his mother
keels over from a heart attack and dies when he is charged. One mother
down.
Three years later he has grown a beard and is
still pissed about his dead mom and starts going after the gang that set
him up – torturing one guy by electrocuting him – but when he tracks them
down at a junk car lot – he makes the mistake of having a car dropped on
top of him and crushing his leg. With one leg useless, the bad guys must
assume he is no longer a danger – big mistake – they clearly don’t realize
that a crutch can do double duty as a rifle and that an artificial leg
can be used to club a man to death – he is more lethal than ever – though
to my disappointment unlike the Japanese film, "Gun Crazy", the artificial
leg wasn’t really a bazooka! Really angry that he now won’t be able to
dance in the musical sequences, he drags himself out of the hospital bed
and goes looking for one-legged justice – with his leg often falling off
– and he tracks down Shabana. She helps him retrieve his leg – the darn
thing fell off again – and tells him how sorry she was but that she had
no choice – they had drugged her and taken pictures of her nude body and
forced her to do this dastardly deed – after asking first to see the pictures
Rajesh recruits her to get back at these men.
Let’s bring the two other females into the story.
Zeenat Aman is a nightclub performer whose boyfriend sells cocaine for
this same group of thugs – but one night they think he is double-crossing
them and so come for the both of them. Fortunately for her, Rajesh and
Shabana knock her out first and gag her – but the gang tracks down the
boyfriend to the house of a buddy’s and take them both prisoner. On to
this scene creeps the buddy’s sister, Parveen Babi, who starts a ruckus
by knocking out some of the bad guys, but in the ensuing mêlée
both guys are shot and Parveen is chased down the beach by the legendary
bad guy Bob Christo! She actually has his number until he uses a tranquilizer
dart to her posterior. She is saved only by a drunk, Mithun Chakravorty,
who is annoyed by all the noise. He carries her back to his shack and passes
out in a stupor with her in his bed – and the next morning is angry to
find Parveen sleeping there next to him! What the hell – angry to find
her in his bed and kicks her out – clearly he has a major drinking problem
– most men spend much of their lives trying to figure out ways to get women
like Parveen into their beds! Later she goes back to her house to find
her brother dead – and when her mother comes down the steps she too sees
her dead son and naturally falls down the stairs and dies! Dead mother
number two! A bad day for Parveen though – first waking up next to Mithun,
then being rejected by a drunk and then finding a dead brother and a soon
to be dead mother. Normally you would say she should have stayed in bed
that day - but not with Mithun in it!
She too joins the band of Rajesh, Shabana and
Zeenat – and after a whole week of training in fire arms and karate, they
are ready to go after the band of bad guys. Soon Mithun joins them and
oddly a group that consists of a one legged man, a drunk and three voluptuous
women throw fear and dread into the gang. First they take on a kitchen
full of transvestite cooks, then battle the bad guys in a warehouse to
rescue two kids – in which at one point Zeenat jumps from the third level
on to a high bar down below, does a few flips around to gain velocity and
throws herself through a glass plate window to knock down one guy – just
think if she had practiced for two weeks! Later the three babes dress up
in traditional garb to perform at an outdoor fair in hopes of being sold
into prostitution – in which they sing provocatively:
Even if you eat me a little
You will be in difficulty
Don’t say I didn’t warn you
I am a chilly from Kolhapur
They all manage to find themselves in the castle
of the major baddie – played with his usual subtle eye-popping badness
by Amrish Puri who is intent on spreading chaos in India because they took
his kingdom away from him. Another major brouhaha follows. A lot of this
isn’t that well executed but its so much silly fun. During the fight Rajesh
takes off his leg to use to hit someone, but somehow still manages to walk
- a mysterious third leg perhaps?
It is an interesting cast made of newcomers who
were to make it big and stars that were very much on the wane. Rajesh was
a huge star in the early 70’s – the first to be anointed as a super star
by the media – but by the 80’s he was grasping for any role and making
friends with the bottle. Both Zeenat and Parveen were teetering at the
far edge of their careers as well as new younger actresses were coming
into film. During the 1970’s Zeenat and Parvani had been rivals of a sort
– both with the same sultry looks and both often playing characters who
broke the traditional good female role by being part vamp and part heroine
and all sex. They also often co-starred with Amitabh Bachchan in his less
serious outings like "Shaan", "Don" and "The Great Gambler". Parveen never
quite made it to the star status that Zeenat did – sometimes referred to
as a poor man’s Zeenat – but they both had their fan base who had nothing
nice to say about the other actress and at one point she made it to the
cover of Time magazine. Though Zeenat is a favorite of mine I have to admit
by the time of this film, she was starting to lose her luster and appears
a bit bloated with way too much rouge applied while Parveen still looks
great. To read more about Parveen check out this
page.
Mithun’s career was just taking off and in this
same year he was to reach stardom with the classically bad film, “Disco
Dancer” that created a disco rage at the time. The stunning Shabana actually
never made it that big in Bollywood but has had a legendary career in what
is termed the “parallel” cinema – i.e. serious non-musical films – in 2002
the New York Film Festival paid tribute to her – and she has gained much
acclaim (and criticism from the power structure) for her work for social
justice – crusading for the poor, for women rights and for religious tolerance.
Why she choose to appear in this film in the same year she made the classic
“Aarth” is perplexing (but I am glad she did!) but certainly many actors
in the parallel cinema often jump occasionally to Bollywood for the high
salaries so that they can afford to act in theater and serious fare.
I don’t want to mislead anyone into think this
is a good film per se – but many of these action films made in Bollywood
during the 70’s and 80’s are simply over the top fun in which every punch
has the sound of a firecracker, people constantly are flying in all directions
and in the end the good guys are always victorious. This is one of those.
Though this is an action film, there is always time to stop the killing
and dance and this has five musical interludes but the music from R.D.
Burman isn't up to his usual standards and won't stick in your mind for
long.
My rating for this film: 6.5
Song
1
Song
2
