Hardcore, totally top-class ‘80s Bollywood
Hero
Director: Nikhil Advani
Actors: Suraj Pancholi, Athiya Shetty
Rating: **
As with the audience, and therefore with the movie industry, the first thing you want to know is, “Hero kaun hai” (Who’s the hero). Well, the picture itself is called Hero. When it came out in 1983, written and directed by Subhash Ghai, and it was really this same film—give or take a few things here and there—nobody knew Jackie Shroff. Almost overnight (although I suspect not quite in the same sense as Hrithik Roshan), Jackie became the hero. This film, I’m told,is completely the brainchild of super-hero Salman Khan.It has been designed to position a first-time actor in the league of the ‘80s style heroes.
The opening shot is all-important. Suraj Pancholi is introduced in various close-up shots of his muscled physique while he does some gravity defying pull-ups with the shifting iron bar. He unleashes an assault on the baddies thereafter to convince you, if there was any doubt, that he is in fact the “hero”. Even if some of the usual swagger is missing, dialogue delivery is slightly fuzzy, and we haven’t seen him riding a horse yet, so God knows if he’s good at that or not. This is after all his first film.
Whether or not the audiences will begin to worship him like a super-star someday is something only faith-healers, shamans or psychologists could shed light on. The inexplicably cosmic relationship between a star and their audience (how someone is loved and the other isn’t, regardless of talent) is beyond the scope of film reviewing.
But why Suraj Pancholi, why not a younger version of Sonu Sood or Vidyut Jamwal type newbie? Well, to start with Suraj is the son of actor Aditya Pancholi, who incidentally plays his godfather and the villain in this film as well. More importantly, Jackie’s son Tiger, if you may, has already debuted with a picture called Heropanti where even the haunting theme music from the original Hero was used in the soundtrack. Salman’s pet director David Dhawan made a movie called Main Tera Hero centred on his son Varun, the point of which was, look ma, I’m the hero.
To be fair this is a much better looking film, and that’s because the director, Nikhil Advani, is among the most competent ones we have, even if he isn’t necessarily a filmmaker with a definitive voice, or at least he seems like he hasn’t much to say. The vistas look relatively slick. The lighting is first-rate. There is some effort at making things appear at least slightly realistic, even within a Bollywood fantasy. Which is just as well. The formula of the intro-story-crisis-climax has sufficiently served cinema goers for quite a few decades.
What happened with romantic stories however was that it became increasingly difficult to introduce good enough conflicts. Who cares about the Nazi papa or the qazi if the mian and biwi are raazi? Well, if the papa is a top police officer (Tigmanshu Dhulia), and the daughter falls for her abductor, a handsome goon, there is still a legit problem.
Such is how the cookie consistently crumbles in this faithful remake of Hero. Athiya Shetty is the heroine. It’s really hard to erase nightmares of a square jaw, vague female version of Sunil Shetty while she’s on screen. Be that as it may, she is a much better actor than her dad. As you would know, that’s not saying much.
Together the hero and heroine attempt to fight the world to be in each other’s arms. She prays to “Buddhaji” for his wellbeing. He reforms himself along with other goon friends, who have nothing better to do but base their whole lives on him. The villain growls once in a while. The dad looks on helpless. That ‘80s dard doesn’t quite show. Sadly. But the template is the same.