Friday, July 19, 2013

Sawaal (1982)

Cast:
Earnest and boring police officer: Inspector Ravi Malhotra (Shashi Kapoor)


His innocent baby-faced girlfriend: Sonia Mehta (Poonam Dhillan)


Her effervescent brother: Vicky Mehta (Randhir Kapoor)


Vicky's fiancee: Reshmi (Swaroop Sampat)


Vicky and Sonia's mom: Anju Mehta (Waheeda Rehman)


Their evil smuggler dad: Dhanpathrai Mehta (Sanjeev Kumar)


His evil co-smuggler (and Reshmi's brother): Shamsher Singh (Prem Chopra)


A smuggler team man who wants to go straight: Madan Puri


I have never seen any actor as bored with his role as Shashi is in this movie, and it's no wonder, because his part must be unbearably dull to play. He is a "serious" police officer, who never smiles and runs around capturing bad guys and giving dialogues filled with righteous indignation.


He fights evil.


And he has a girlfriend.


And apparently a dad? (who shows up for about ten minutes as a plot device and then never appears again, in spite of being left in the hospital the last we see him?)


But essentially Shashi only plays the foil to Sanjeev Kumar's wonderful wickedness. Sanjeev even gets better theme music. And a really cool icon collection.


The other noteworthy things: Prem Chopra shows off his eyebrow skills. (And he dances a little bit. I think this is the first time I've seen the bad guy dance. Usually you can tell who's actually a good guy by whether they hop up and join the dancing. Don't let this fool you; Prem stays evil-evil-evil.)


As you might have noticed from the cast descriptions, there is a potential conflict between Ravi, the super-righteous and humorless police officer and Dhanpathrai, his super-evil prospective father-in-law. And yup, that is a problem. Eventually, Dhanpathrai realizes he has to choose between his career and his kids.

The ending seems pretty abrupt to me, like they realized nothing was going to save this and they might as well cut it short. Still, it's not that bad, and if you're a Sanjeev Kumar fan, this film might be worth watching for you -- his part is pretty cool. Or if you have an unusual love for Prem Chopra, he gets a lot of screen time. But if you're a Shashi fan, don't bother.

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