Being a huge fan of the original I approached the remake with a fair share of trepidation. Afterall the original has earned its fair share of fans for the performances of its lead antagonist and protagonist, dialogues worth memorizing and director Mukul S. Anand's stylish (for its time) film making. I waited with bated breath for the first trailer and the first thing that comes to mind is how wrong Hrithik is for the lead. He's too "pretty" to play a beloved gang lord from the slums of Mumbai. That is assuming he is still essaying that characterization of Vijay Dinanath Chauhan. Oddly there's not one line of dialogue uttered by the lead so perhaps my feedback is unwarranted.
Like most of modern day Indian cinema this looks stylized. What appears to set it apart from the masala fare like "Dabang" and "Singham" is that it appears more grounded in reality. It would be wrong to expect hyper-realism from a commercial potboiler such as this and director Karan Malhotra appears to strike the right balance.
Though it is too soon to judge I feel I'll be disappointed with the villains. Sanjay Dutt's interpretation of Kancha Cheena looks over-the-top in a performance, I fear, might be grating on the nerves. Rishi Kapoor as a villain will either be a revelation or a laugh-out-loud case of bad judgement. Don't get me wrong, he's an extremely talented actor who has marvelously pulled off roles with shades of gray in the past.
As a fan it's natural for me to speculate. From the footage we've seen I gather that Kancha Cheena is now the main drug lord of Mandwa and not an international drug kingpin as in the original. The new villain, essayed by Mr. Kapoor, could very well be a retread of the Dhinkar Rao character. What say you the fans?
