Agneepath

I was reading in the news the other day that Karan Johar is planning to remake 'Agneepath'. Initially the reports were he wanted to cast Hrithik for the title role and later I heard he wanted to cast Abhishek for that role.

There is a part of me which says some movies and roles should not be reprised. They should be left immortal. Some movies like Sholay, Mughal-e-azam, Agneepath, Deewar, Shakti should not be remade. Where will you find an actor of the caliber of Prithvi Raj Kapoor to play the role of Akbar, where will you find an actor to play the role of Vijay Dinanath Chauhan? Frankly none of the current actors can do justice to that character. Abhishek comes close to it but not exactly.

There is another part of me which says there is nothing wrong in remaking these classics as long as you rewrite the character not just to suit the present times but also to suit the actor playing the character. In Agneepath, Amitabh's character was sketched with him in mind. His walk, style, dialogue everything was tailor made for Amitabh.

So if you want to remake Agneepath and you have Hrithik in mind then rewrite the character with Hrithik's strengths in mind. The new character will not talk like the old one, will not walk like the old one. Then you are doing a justice to the remake. Otherwise you will pick up unnecessary flak and loss of money.