The original Agneepath has been one of my favorite films. Amitabh's performance in that movie was phenomenal. Even his son Abhishek calls this his most favorite movie of his father. When I originally heard of the remake, I was skeptical and outrightly dismissive of this project. Given the notorious reputation of Bollywood with originality, I thought they would ripoff the old story and put it in a new bottle.
When I saw the remake, I was very impressed. This is the best remake made by Bollywood till date. They took the essence of the original movie and created a completely new movie with new characters. It was impossible to picture Hrithik playing those original scenes like Mr. Bachchan did. They created a normal man in Vijay's character and not THE Vijay Dinanath Chauhan who was larger than life. That made the character believable. Then they removed some silly characters from the original like the Mithun Chakravarthy's character, Tinnu Anand's character and those three silly villians. They kept the contest only between Vijay and Kancha. In the process, they created the new character of Rauf Lala which is brilliantly played by Rishi Kapoor. I thought that Rishi Kapoor was a good actor, but this role really pushes him to display all his acting prowess. The new character of Priyanka is also well written and well played by her.
I am surprised with the choice of Ajay-Atul as the music directors. They delivered so well just like Singham. I am surprised that Karen opted for these new music directors. In the end, I would like to give kudos to the writers of this movie for thinking out of the box and being brave enough to reject the unnecessary characters from the original and having the courage that these changes will still not disappoint the original Agneepath audience. Like how Krissh and Lage Raho Munna Bhai started the trend of sequels, I think Agneepath will surely continue making good remakes of the classics (the trend of remakes was started by Don). We don't mind seeing the remakes of the classics if you are able to think our of the box and take just the essence of the original.
Having talked so much about this movie, let me give you my stars: I give 4 ****/5 for this effort.
When I saw the remake, I was very impressed. This is the best remake made by Bollywood till date. They took the essence of the original movie and created a completely new movie with new characters. It was impossible to picture Hrithik playing those original scenes like Mr. Bachchan did. They created a normal man in Vijay's character and not THE Vijay Dinanath Chauhan who was larger than life. That made the character believable. Then they removed some silly characters from the original like the Mithun Chakravarthy's character, Tinnu Anand's character and those three silly villians. They kept the contest only between Vijay and Kancha. In the process, they created the new character of Rauf Lala which is brilliantly played by Rishi Kapoor. I thought that Rishi Kapoor was a good actor, but this role really pushes him to display all his acting prowess. The new character of Priyanka is also well written and well played by her.
I am surprised with the choice of Ajay-Atul as the music directors. They delivered so well just like Singham. I am surprised that Karen opted for these new music directors. In the end, I would like to give kudos to the writers of this movie for thinking out of the box and being brave enough to reject the unnecessary characters from the original and having the courage that these changes will still not disappoint the original Agneepath audience. Like how Krissh and Lage Raho Munna Bhai started the trend of sequels, I think Agneepath will surely continue making good remakes of the classics (the trend of remakes was started by Don). We don't mind seeing the remakes of the classics if you are able to think our of the box and take just the essence of the original.
Having talked so much about this movie, let me give you my stars: I give 4 ****/5 for this effort.
