Cinema has long been the passion and past time of India. From the days of Raja Harishchandra all the way to the technical brilliance of Ra.One and "don't ask how" suerhits like Dabbang & Body Gaurd. We Indians have given so much time and thought to this medium. Birth of the term Bollywood in itself proves how cinema has evolved in India as a celebration. No other nation perhaps boasts a nickname so closely aligned to Hollywood. Not to mention the regional variations of Kollywood, Mollywood and Sandalwood. However, one cannot ignore the hypocrite that lives in every average and above average Indian cinema fan. I am talking of people who watch all A grade to Z grade Hollywood masala. This hypocrisy comes to light every time a Rajnikant film is due for release or a Rajni joke does the rounds. After Shankar’s million dollar production ”Enthiran” hit the screens, Rajni mania seems to have re-iginted. I will admit – I am a big fan of Rajni but the comparisons I make here are not fuelled by my undying support for the most humble superstar the industry has ever seen. I am sure every one of you have heard how the "Style Mannan" splits a bullet with a knife, beats 100’s of bad guys on his own, kisses a snake on its head, jumps a fire engine across a broken bridge and many more countless other sequences from his movies. What really makes the fan in me upset is that the same people, who ridicule him for these sequences, applaud what every other Hollywood star does in most of the action flicks we have seen. Here are a few examples and I request to leave your prejudice behind before you continue to read this.
Arnold “The Governor” Schwarzenegger, who with his huge frame might find it difficult to get into the Airbus 380, not only manages to fit himself into the AV-8B Harrier fighter jet but also flies it as if it were a car parked in the neighbours yard (lets go for a spin baby!!). Yes, I am talking about 1994 block buster True Lies. I am sure the theatre would have exploded in applause even he made the police horse jump from the top floor of the New York sky scraper in a earlier sequence from the same movie. Move on to another film, the third instalment in the Transporter Series – Transporter 3. The bad guys have kidnapped the girl and are in a moving train and our hero, the good looking husky voiced Jason Statham, is chasing them in his Audi A8 6.0 W12. You guessed it right, it’s just a car. After all efforts fail, he finally parks his car on an over bridge with train approaching. As the train passes beneath the bridge, our hero brings the engine to life, burns a ton of rubber doing a wheelie and promptly jumps the car off the bridge and land precisely into the train compartment. No injuries, piece of cake. I couldn’t find my seat on a train with a ticket with so much precision. This guy manages to park a car. Lets visit some absolute gems in science marvels. I have seen many people talking animatedly about John Travolta & Nicholas Cage exchanging their faces in the action flick Face Off. One person’s face is cut out by a laser and pasted on the other, as if our body was a windows operating system and we could cut & paste body parts at will. Then there is the legendary John Rambo, the character immortalised by Sly Stallone in the Rambo Series, who can do anything that he wishes to. That includes bringing an entire Russian army unit or freeing Vietnamese prisoners of war on his own and many other things that the entire US Army could not do in real life. Harrison Ford did come across as a very good looking and smart US President James Marshall in Air Force One but his antics made us feel he mistook this movie for another instalment of the Indiana Jones series. What else would you comment when the President of the United States zip-lines from the crashing Air Force one onto a C-130 Hercules rescue plane. But we all watched in awe and he makes it safely with his wife and child. All this is when people can’t board the city line bus through the steps without falling once or twice. The more recent A-Team has Liam Neeson guiding his sidekick to fly a tank that has just fallen off an Aircraft. Yes, an Army TANK!! I am purposefully leaving Steven Segal out of all this. Remember, none of these are superhero movies. The characters are normal human beings. While we applaud all the above scenes with so much vigour we run jokes on Rajnikanth for biting a knife thrown at him, dodging bullets, fighting 10 goons, popping cigars in true Rajni style or swinging a pistol and for never getting killed on screen. Why? Why this difference in reception when both the characters do the exact same things.
I have enjoyed every Hollywood movie mentioned above and I have enjoyed Rajnikanth for years. I think its really time we appreciated our home grown heroes for taking the fight to Hollywood. The days are not too distant when Indian heroes and Indian movies will be far ahead of anything that comes out of Hollywood. Until then I have one statement for the hypocrites – Thalaiva! Nee Than Hero!
From a Rajnikanth Fan – The Scribbler
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