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KHILADI TU ANARI
("I'm cool,
you're a chump")
1994, Hindi, 175 minutes.
Directed by Sameer Malkan. Music: Anu Malik
The special twists to this routine masala action flick are its selfconsciously
clever parody of Bollywood and its fans, and its unselfconsciously over-the-top
portrayal of dosti (male bosom-buddyhood). The hairy-chested Karan Joglekar
(Akshay Kumar) is a hyper-macho police inspector, bent on avenging the murder
of his revered elder brother (likewise a cop) by the arch criminal Goli (Shakti
Kapoor). The baby-faced, long-haired Deepak Kumar (Saif Ali Khan) is a youthful
cinema superstar who has grown bored with his adoring fans and generic romantic
roles in "singing and dancing" (naachna-gaana) films (his first song
here is a Grease-y sendup called "My Adorable Darling"). Each is a
savvy "player" or operator (khiladi) in his own realm, but
a naif or simpleton (anari) in the other's.
When Deepak witnesses law-unto-himself Karan trash one of Bollywood's notorious
gangster-producers, it's dosti at first sight, and the beginning of an adoring
apprenticeship to the older man whose ostensible purpose is to enable the star
to win manlier roles ("like Sanjay, Shah Rukh, and Jackie!"). Prodded
by a superior, Karan submits reluctantly, making no effort to conceal his disgust
for the preening young "hero" who, moreover, quickly captures the
heart of Karan's own sister Shivangi (Rageshwari). Enter Basanti (Shilpa Shetty),
a buxom street dancer who is a dead ringer for Goli's murdered moll Mona, the
only eyewitness to the elder Joglekar's slaying, and suddenly Deepak's expertise
in the world of artifice comes in handy, as he proceeds to transform the rustic
Basanti into the cabaret-dancer Mona, and then to convince her erstwhile lover
that she survived his bullets, though without her memory. Basanti/Mona, now
in love with Karan, becomes his mole in Goli's evil empire — a B-grade
underworld of international arms smuggling (involving deals with bald foreigners
named, inevitably, "Peter," as well as with a few salaaming sheikhs),
corporate boardrooms with kitsch-moderne decor, and a machine-gun toting sadistic
bodyguard who sports a mohawk.
Although each girl gets a romantic song with her respective hero, and the inimitable
Johny Lever (as Deepak's servant Dhansukh) provides slapstick, the focus remains
on the slowly-growing bond between the two men, each of whom offers the other
a desired (unconsciously, in Karan's case) completeness; their budding dosti
comes out (so to speak) in the climactic title song — a stamping, headbanging
disco-duet that makes Amitabh and Dharmendra's famous motorcycle ride in SHOLAY
seem like, well, just friendship. In the end, not even Goli's tortures can im-pair
this pair. When all the knots are untied, each hero gets his girl, but perhaps
more significantly, Deepak gets to don a police inspector's uniform and (literally)
set his pants on fire.