Not a cop out

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Not a cop out

Portrayals of policemen in Hindi films have varied down the ages — but these flicks have managed to pack in quite a punch

By Khalid Mohamed

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Published: Fri 18 Nov 2011, 7:07 PM

Last updated: Tue 7 Apr 2015, 3:02 AM

The verdict is clear: India is in no mood to lap up home-cooked special effects extravaganzas. Nearly a month after its premiere, Shah Rukh Khan’s ambitious Ra.One hasn’t exactly become the box office record-breaker it was expected to be. Forecasts of the trade gurus have gone seriously awry.

FIRST cut: Amitabh Bachchan plays a political fixer and Rana Daggubati will be seen as a rookie police officer in RGV’s forthcoming film Department

The mega-budgeted superhero adventure hasn’t been adjudged a failure either, since it did amass upbeat ticket sales during the Diwali and Eid holidays. Lesson learnt: the audience prefers straight, no-frills entertainers with the conventional elements of romance, comedy and action. Not surprisingly, then, films revolving around the age-old good guys vanquishing the baddies are now being considered the best bets.

Police officers exterminating underworld dons and duplicitous politicians are in vogue, thanks to the super-success of Salman Khan’s Wanted and Dabangg and Ajay Devgn’s Singham. For a while, the crime-doesn’t-pay theme had been put on hold. It was smartly repackaged by producer Ekta Kapoor for Once Upon a Time in Mumbai, which flashbacked to the 1970s when the underworld was hyper-active in the nation’s commercial capital. A sequel is already in the works.

IN UNIFORM: Aamir gets into the cop mode for Dhuan

Ram Gopal Varma, who had abandoned cops and mobsters after Company (2002), to hack out horror flicks, is once again into confrontations between the men in uniform and the crime syndicates. He is now filming Department, featuring Amitabh Bachchan as a Machiavellian political fixer, Sanjay Dutt as a cop who helms an undercover team that is licensed to kill, and newcomer Rana Daggubati as a rookie police officer. Naseeruddin Shah, in a brief role, shows up as an underworld kingpin.

Varma will also produce a sequel to Ab Tak Chhappan (2004) in which Nana Patekar essayed the part of a cop, who like Dirty Harry, takes the law into his own hands. Sanjay Gupta intends to follow up his gritty Shootout at Lokhandwala (2007) with Shootout at Wadala. And Aamir Khan gets into the cop mode for the under-production Dhuan, being directed by Reema Katgi.

FIGHT FOR RIGHT: Ajay Devgn essays the role of the tough-as-nails Baji Rao Singham in Singham

With the boom in cop movies, you would think the police force of Mumbai would be pleased. They aren’t, citing Govind Nihalani’s Ardh Satya (1980) and Varma’s Satya (1988) and Company, as the only films that have been fair to their work ethic. Otherwise, it is felt that Bollywood has made a joke of the police force.

The stars and stripes on uniforms are incorrect. They’re even shown to wear full-sleeved shirts when they cannot — unless it’s so wintry, that a woollen armband can be worn. Neither can cops wear their hair long. But at times, movie heroes in uniforms sport hair as long as hippies.

Cops have been vulnerable to gross distortion and, on the other end of the spectrum, excessive glorification on the Hindi film screen. Either they are venally corrupt or paragons of virtue.

Till the 1970s, the censorship code disallowed any ‘criticism’ or ‘denigration’ of the police force. In the event, genial character actors, Iftekar and Jagdish Raj, occupied police chief desks, their parts being strictly cardboard cut-outs. Or there would be the morally upright Dev Anand in CID (1956).

COMIC COP: Salman Khan plays a playful cop with a mean punch, Chulbul Panday, in Dabangg

Circa the 1970s, the policeman with grey areas was finally permitted by the censors, starting off with Zanjeer (1973). Left with no option, the cop here breaks the rules.Vendetta is achieved. Down the years, Naajayaz (1995), Sarfarosh (1999), Shool (1999), Gangaajal (2003), Sehar (2005), and A Wednesday (2008) are some of the few films which have displayed variable degrees of authenticity.

Overwhelmingly though, the movie cop remains a figment of the imagination. A senior inspector was kicked about Akshay Kumar’s depiction as a Casanova cop in Khakhee (2004). But he wasn’t as amused about the loser cops in Dhoom (2004) and Dhoom 2 (2006), in which the bad guys burgled the scenes away from the law force.

The inspector says, “No one has yet shown the amount of workload and responsibilities we have to shoulder. No one cares about the flak we get, least of all, filmmakers. The best thing is to just laugh it off.” The inspector mentions the example of John Abraham as an undercover police officer. Recently in Force, he flaunted a hugely pumped-up body. According to the real-life cop, “Many of us gym and keep in shape. Show us with brawn if you must but how about some brain power too? Don’t make us out to be as unbelievable as Ra:One.”

Touché.

(The writer has been reviewing Bollywood since he was in diapers. He has scripted three films and directed three others. Currently, he is working on a documentary and a book of short stories.)


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