Almost a decade ago, I did something that would strike to most people as unbelievable. I walked out of a theatre full of people shaking their heads in disbelief, including my mother and my sibling, and I actually started smiling, not out of cynicism but out of sheer admiration. The incredulity on their faces was something to remember for a long time. But I did not care. Yes, you can say that I enjoyed 'Tashan'.
Now, of course, in a time when cinephiles can worship Kanti Shah movies precisely for their deliberate, utterly unsubtle mediocrity, this does not sound so surprising. But back then, the giddy, deliciously nutty experience of walking out of a theatre, with the title song playing in my ears and that assorted miasma of quixotic delights still lingering in my mind, was an act of heresy, least of all to someone who was avoiding, consciously, mainstream fare in a desperate, foolhardy bid of adolescent years to be taken seriously. In a way, though, enjoying 'Tashan' liberated me from those pretensions and while I still prefer a film with real plot meat, subversive wit and solid storytelling over just glossy blockbusters, I can settle any time for a no-brainer as long as it knows how to entertain without sounding too serious about it.
And 'Tashan' does that. The average Bollywood action film is a godawful affair, populated by blockbuster-churning superstars fitted out as paper-thin and poorly etched imitations of their counterparts in the West and cast as self-worshipping super-humans expected to not only dance their jig in midst of shoddy real life parables but also try hard to be cool about them. The women end up getting a raw deal, merely there to look gorgeous and kick ass in a selected spree of scenes which is hardly giving them a fair deal for their natural spunk. And the villains start promisingly but end up being inefficient kingpins and are even robbed of the chance to wield some personality, let alone intelligence. Just watch 'Tiger Zinda Hai' for evidence.
It is therefore rare to find a Bollywood masala actioner that basks in the unabashed, unashamed glory of being purely Indian in its mindset. And I am not talking about those 'Dabangg' movies which are themselves blithe and blatant recycled versions of Southern action cinema, which feels more genuinely nutty, even with all its mediocrity. I am talking about a film which celebrates the grandiose, silly, spectacular, colourful and even shamelessly but somewhat inventively rehashed essence of action cinema as we always saw coming from Bollywood throughout the decades.
I have already poured out all my love and affection for the film's many virtues, from the film's berserk yet beautiful visual palette alternating from Yashraj-romance sublime to graphic novel frenetic to Robert Rodriguez blast-em-up to even more to how it does adequate justice to the archetype heroine with Kareena Kapoor's spirited, slim and spunky Pooja being shades fresher than the empty-headed bimbettes we get. There is also the film's cheeky film and pop-culture referencing, from a character's English equated to first George Bush and then Prince Charles (I am not revealing the final punchline, though) to the villain touting himself as a blend of Lara and Tendulkar both. However, I would also like to make a case for two things here, one of its maker's delicious love for the very tropes that fill his film and, of course, the hero.
If you are one who enjoys, without a shred of guilt or pretension, those preposterous Manmohan Desai multi-starrers or the kind of elaborate, grand action sagas made by the likes of Subhash Ghai and Rajiv Rai in the 1980s, you qualify for 'Tashan' too. Vijay Krishna Acharya, who penned the first two 'Dhoom' films (and even directed the abysmal third film, but more of that later), understood that perfectly, perhaps to a better extent than most of our current breed of filmmakers. While they only end up making mediocre films which try to compensate by pretending to be, in throwback fashion, deliberately self-depreciating as films of yore, Acharya ended up making a film that was not only comfortable in its silliness but also celebratory of the sometimes slipshod yet always energetic and exuberant feel of those films of yore without ever forgetting to forge its own radical path.
In 'Tashan', the first half feels as if it belongs to a Guy Ritchie caper: slick, urban and even quirkily obsessed with flipping between languages, from Hindi to English to Hinglish. When the plot twists come, the film switches over from being a noir-lite caper, complete with a leading lady morphing into a femme fatale, into a full-fledged 80s-style potboiler yarn, with bloody revenge, the villain's silly sidekicks, adolescent romance blooming in adulthood and grand, even lengthy climaxes in the villain's massive lair, being doled out. This indulgence, however, comes across as most refreshing and it indicates just how coolly unpretentious Acharya is about his film.
Compared to that, other big-budget Hindi action films start by trying too hard to be as slick and cutting-edge as their American counterparts and then end up sliding ridiculously into the same stew of ham-fisted cliches and much portentous intensity. 'Tashan', on the other hand, follows this template but it does not give much of a damn about logic, seriousness or even rationale to begin with. The plot is as flaky and deliberately loopholed as it should be; what amazes is how Acharya, his well-cast actors and the crew gloss over these inherent setbacks and runs with that idea of a truly freaked out Bollywood action movie. This is why that moment of transition, from referencing the West to being truly desi, feels so effortless and entertaining.
Of course, not all of it works. The film goes on for far too long than it is supposed to. I guess that has to do with the usual overkill ambition that any newbie director brings to his work and while it is justified eventually, some of it can be a bit too ponderous, especially to the uninitiated. There could have been a lot more juicy wit and warmth in places when the narrative pauses to cut the characters some slack and while Vishal-Shekhar did serve up an exquisite and eclectically Bollywood soundtrack, the songs do delay the action and wisecracks significantly. More crucially, Acharya builds a potentially thrilling screen villain and then nearly wastes away that potential on repeating the same gimmick. Anil Kapoor's Bhaiyaji, a gaudy, garrulous kingpin, who could not have been out of place in a film like 'Tridev', is indeed quite a hoot, indefinitely more interesting and enjoyable than both hunky studs being carved out as rivals to our aggressively alpha-male heroes and arthouse actors made into forgettable punching bags for the more muscular of our leading men. See him gamely throw in gravitas of menace to his frequently hilarious Hinglish outbursts or bring unexpected warmth with that memorably goofy grin. But in the last half hour, he becomes, regrettably, only a comic book villain to be defeated and nothing else. After such a thrillingly alive turn so far, he turns out to be ultimately cardboard.
But that is a minor complaint. In Akshay Kumar's deliciously named Bachchan Pandey, Acharya also gives us a hero so coated with flavour, texture and charisma that I wonder why the hell didn't the screen stud trust him to helm all the increasingly mediocre action films he has done subsequently. Today, I complain about his lack of histrionic skill to pull off roles that need more capable performers but I also remember the field in which he is most comfortable and memorable, that of a fighting man who is unafraid to embrace his own lunacy without ever losing his heroism. Like Jackie Chan in those Hong Kong karate-chop comedies or Bruce Willis deflating the mock-seriousness of those 'Die Hard' movies, Kumar is utterly irresistible in 'Tashan', carrying off both the rippling essence of a truly macho hero of the heartland and a goofball with an unforgettable grin and one whom we really need to be alive and kicking at the end. He alone proves just how well the director nailed the tongue-in-cheek essence of Indian action cinema.
It feels sad, therefore, that Bollywood chose to shove aside this odd, unlikely gem of a film (of course, the scathing reviews helped a lot in this) and chose, instead, a whole new sub-genre of mind-bogglingly mindless superstar vehicles intended to appeal to masses which had only pointless superstar celebration and nothing else. On the other hand, there were more of the shoddy, superficial Hollywood imitations that further plunged the genre into lurid depths. I regret also that Acharya himself fell prey to the latter and ended up making 'Dhoom: 3', film which comes as a rude shock after such madcap, even inspired brilliance in the misunderstood debut. Some things don't change, I think.
But it is nevertheless equally sad to see just how the action film genre has become so deathly dull in Hindi cinema with big studios only spending either on flimsy spy thrillers or on hinterland yarns and populated solely with big stars and nothing else. Witty action capers now belong to the unconventional talents like Sriram Raghavan and Abhishek Chaubey and nobody can take a risk on making a retro-fitted throwback of the 80s cinema (though everybody will praise the latest 'Dabangg' or 'Singham' sequel).
