Looking back, Subhash K Jha turns the focus on Salman Khan’s Garv, which clocks 21 years.
For some strange, scatological reason this high-voltage screech-and-skid cops-and-gangsters drama keeps making a ‘moot’ point constantly. With squirmy regularity one or the other red-eyed character brings up the Hindi word for urine . Oh to pee calm again!
As with the rest of the crew, dialogue writer Anirudh Dhodapkar knows how to fall blissfully into the claptrap. Every component of Garv is designed to get masses into a a foam-and -fume-filled frenzy. Every sequence in debutant director Puneet Issar’s film ends with a double exclamation-mark. And never mind the over-cluttered down- market sentences replete with gutter-level terms like bhadva and kotha. Critical situations demand we do away with decorum.
Every massy filmmaker from Prakash Mehra to Iqbal Durrani gets close to the people’s pulse by tapping the basest instincts in the audience. Issar gets down to basics, double-quick. Garv doesn’t waste time in establishing the cop-hero as the rebel without a pause…and plenty of applause!
The de-taali brand of hero-giri where the main actor gets an across-the-board monopolistic upclose-and-personal treatment by the script used to be peculiar to the angry-young-man anti-establishment Amitabh Bachchan films of the 1970s and 80s.
Garv harks back with arrogant pride to the most illustrious action-potboilers of those times. Its sur of presentation, treatment of characters and hysterically rabblerousing projection of socio-political values must be evaluated in the context of Prakash Mehra’s Zanjeer and Manmohan Desai’s Coolie rather than the political savvy cinema of today like Dev and Yuva. Like Zanjeer, the seething cop in the driver’s seat cannot come to terms with the rot around him.
Salman’s Arjun is a direct descendent of the Bachchan’s Vijay. The difference lies not in the concept of heroism but the changing face of villainy. While Zanjeer had smuggler Ajit operating deviously from his den with his Mona Darling(Bindu) the kingpin in Garv is a don from Dubai(Mukesh Rishi) who controls everything from the film industry to the politics in Mumbai.
The similarities to a certain Dawood Ibrahim aren’t only intentional, they also give the malice-element in the masala a certain topical edge that cleverly propels the plot through a zigzag of fullblown gimmickry and halfbaked news-worthiness.
While operating from the never-never land of the ludicrous, Peneet Issar takes a bird’s eye view of terrorism-related issues such as the isolation of the Indian Muslim. There’s the token Muslim presence(who would earlier wear his religion in physical appearance and the Islamic background music, but has now been ‘assimilated’ into the mainstream).
In one of the film’s numerous shock-value sequences Arbaaz Khan as the cop Hyder Ali rips off his uniform in front of his corrupt senior officer who insinuates the honest cop’s terrorist links. “This is the attitude that’s driving many young Muslims to the wrong direction ,” mumbles Salman ominously, thereby making a fervent statement on minorityism , ala Amitabh Bachchan in Coolie.
So far, Salman Khan has largely been seen doing romantic eye-candy with dark overtones emerging in his film Tere Naam. Garv is his first headlong plunge into populist cinema. As the cop who takes on the polical bureaucratic and ‘Dubai’ mafia, Khan goes for the jugular, dropping his voice (more often than his shirt) to a threatening whisper , taking on the scum of the earth with that characteristic sneer of contempt. In the sequence where his colleagues interrogate him after he kills a notorious pimp in an encounter, Salman is delightfully sarcastic.
Salman’s performances are becoming increasingly fine-tuned. His physical and emotional restrain countermands the monstrous excessess of the villainous brigade. Govind Namdeo as the corrupt Maharashtrian chief minister Trivedi (isn’t that a very Uttar Pradeshi reference?) seems to be on the verge of a paralytic stroke. Do we have to give such a sickeningly overblown spin to the ring-tones of baddie-baddie baatein? Even Anupam Kher as a debased lawyer (his sleazy arguments against the hero in the courtroom have to be heard to be believed) turns on the hysterical mode, full–force. For some badly needed self-control there’s Amrish Puri cast in an appealing idealistic role of Salman’s senior and later his defence lawyer(economizing on casting costs eh?).
While the arch-villains and their henchmen occupy whatever space Salman allots them, Arbaaz Khan as his comrade in arms-twisting gets surprisingly ample footage, including a long shoot-out where he eliminates thousands of kilos of Dubai-imported RDX as though it was a heap of Diwali crackers.
The cops are either busy getting suspended or suspending our disbelief beyond the breaking point. Either way, they’re shown as a bunch of brave outlawed law-makers who, in the colourful dialogue writer’s words, “Get suspended for fighting enemies within the country while the soldiers get Paramvir Chakras for the same.”
Incongruities, such as long song breaks with bar-dancer girlfriend Shilpa Shetty(remember Jaya Bhaduri as the chakku-churiyan wali in Zanjeer?) take the edge away from Salman’s performance. And to watch a serious no-nonsense cop break into a jig with Ms Shetty in an orange dhoti, requires nerves of steel.
The steel deal steals upon us as the director unleashes a cyclone of action-oriented gimmicks, all designed to play up Salman’s star power. He delivers with supreme sang-froid. Shilpa Shetty provides the song breaks . The fact that she dances like the wind, helps give her role a spatial rhythm. But the item song by the other starlet , done in topless pelvic thrusting motions, is downright vulgar, as are dialogues like, “You’re blushing like a 16-year old virgin in bed.”
Give us a break from the bordello’s babble, please! Surprisingly even the supporting leading lady Akansha has more footage than Shilpa! In fact the other girl gets a whole sub-plot towards the end to herself.
The film editor creates a hullaballo of suspense around the question, what happened to the hero’s sister while we were busy watching him fight the baddies? Very simple, yaar! She gets raped! Hasn’t the hero’s sister been subjected to this indignity from the time Hindi cinema was invented? To create intrigue out of this moth-balled convention shows the director’s naïve confidence in generating excitement out of the weather-worn.
Surprisingly while Puneet Issar deploys almost every cliché from the book of feel-crude formulism, he misses out on the raksha bandhan. But fear not. The sis is named Rakhi. Point ‘token’.
