I must be the only person of my generation that has not watched the original Agneepath starring Amitabh Bachchan. That being said, I was pleasantly surprised with this new version of the movie directed by Karan Malhotra and produced by Karan Johar, because it kept me engrossed despite belonging to the gory "action" genre.
Hrithik Roshan plays Vijay Deenanath Chauhan, son of teacher Deenanath Chauhan from the small town of Mandwa. Sanjay Dutt plays Kancha Cheena who frames Vijay's father (since the teacher was the only one who stood between Kancha and his plans to take over the village of Mandwa) and gets him falsely accused of rape and hangs him in front of the entire village and Vijay. Vijay and his pregnant mother (played by Zarina Wahab) leave Mandwa to come to Mumbai and Vijay has his first brush with the Mumbai underworld. He curries favour with Lala and joins his gang much to the dismay of his mother. Every move Vijay makes brings him closer to Kancha and avenging his father's murder.
First, I am completely blown away by Hrithik Roshan's performance (although he does look old in this movie). After a long long time, for the duration of the movie, I actually forgot that this is Hrithik Roshan the superstar. He is completely convincing as the angry young man, wronged by the system and driven by the sole aim of avenging his father. I thought the director Karan Malhotra did a great job (yes yes - I am going to watch the original one soon - its top on my must-watch list). Priyanka Chopra did not have much to do as Kaali, Vijay's love interest in the film - they did have a few cute scenes together. I thought all the supporting actors played their roles well. Zarina Wahab looks pretty good for her age. Rishi Kapoor was fabulous in his role. If I have one complaint with the movie, its basically that I don't understand why Kancha asks Vijay to kill Gaitonde when he could do it himself considering the vast army of henchmen at his command. And, in the interest of full disclosure, the movie did drag a bit in the middle. I enjoyed a well-made Hindi movie after a long time. I wish filmmakers paid more attention to their scripts. Good script + good acting = Good movie
All in all, it was good Friday entertainment - am glad hubby persuaded me to watch this flick. And more importantly, our little chotu, very kindly, slept soundly and allowed us to watch the movie with no interruptions.
