If you’re one of the many people who watched Leon (Or The Professional,
as it‘s known in the States) and thought “That was pretty good, but it
would have been much better with song and dance numbers!” then rejoice,
for Bollywood has come to the rescue once again. Bichhoo is
the single most blatant example of Bollywood plagiarism that I’ve
personally seen. Often, Bollywood will just lift the basic idea behind a
film, and by the time they’ve finished making changes in order to suit
Indian sensibilities (and the notorious Indian censors) the end result
is nearly unrecognizable. Bichhoo goes the extra mile, though.
Not only is the overall plot the same, the film gleefully lifts lines,
scenes, and even camera angles from its Western inspiration.
If you’re going to steal, though, steal from the best. Leon is a great film, arguably one of the classics of the action movie genre. Bichhoo is . . . well, it’s not a great film, but it’s a good one. And because it sticks so closely to the original, the changes are shown in sharp relief.
Kiran (Rani Mukherjee) is thrilled by the prospect of a visit from her brother (Sachin Khedekar); he’s the one pleasant person in her family. Sadly, her brother’s visit comes at precisely the wrong time; Kiran’s father (Mohan Joshi) is a small time drugrunner who has just cheated Devraj Khatri (Ashish Vidyarthi) drug lord and head of the Narcotics branch of the Mumbai police. Devraj and his goons kill off the entire family; Kiran happens to be delivering milk to the neighbor at the time, and looks through the keyhole just in time to see her beloved brother being gunned down.
Luckily, the neighbor in question is Jeeva (Bobby Deol), a hit man with a conscience. Jeeva saves her life again when she calls the police and Devraj’s men show up to kill her; after that, he’s stuck with her, despite his better judgement.
Kiran wants Jeeva to train her; he wants her to go away. The pair naturally fall in love while dodging Devraj’s men, but their moment of happiness can’t last forever, and it all leads to an apocalyptic final confrontation.
Bobby Deol is no Aamir Khan, but he’s really very effective here; Jeeva has clearly been beaten down by life, but we see flashes of humanity creep in as Kiran manages to reawaken his emotions. Rani mostly acquits herself well, though she often seems to be playing just a little too young, and her normally husky voice sounds downright hoarse at times. Ashish Vidyarthi is wonderfully menacing as Devraj.
The action scenes are good, though the best ones are directly lifted from Leon. The songs are mostly forgettable. The first number is a little odd; it cuts between an open air anti-drug concert and scenes of Bobby Deol walking through the streets of Mumbai, and the two never really intersect.
The whole film will seem very familiar to anyone who’s seen Leon. It’s the characters who make the difference. Most obviously, the leads in Bichhoo don’t have the extreme age difference of the leads in Leon. Kiran is a college student, and Jeeva is a fairly young man. There are deeper differences, though. Jean Reno’s Leon is in many ways an undeveloped person; there’s a vague mention of him getting into some trouble over a woman, but he’s clearly never had a real life. All he knows is killing, until Natalie Portman’s Matilda shows him howm to live. Jeeva, on the other hand, once had a real job (as a clerk in a video store), a family (including a mother, naturally played by Farida Jalal), and even the World’s Most Annoying Girlfriend (Malaika Arora). We see Jeeva’s life brutally stripped from him, and he’s left a broken shell of a man; in public he’s polite and soft spoken, at home he literally sits and stares at the wall, and he only seems to come alive when working. Where Leon kills quickly, and in the most direct manner possible, Jeeva toys with his prey. He leaves threatening messages, employs flamboyant disguises, and will even beat a target up before getting around to shooting them. He behaves, in other words, exactly like a man with a deathwish.
That deathwish is what leads to the biggest change of all, the change in theme. Leon’s leads are emotionally underdeveloped; they’re both discovering human contact for the first time. Bichhoo, on the other hand, is a love story between two deeply wounded souls. In the end, Matilda gains the ability to connect to other people, to “put down roots”, and a houseplant to reinforce the metaphor. Kiran loses everything; she’s left with a bag of money and a pet scorpion. The notes are the same, but the music is very different.
If you’re going to steal, though, steal from the best. Leon is a great film, arguably one of the classics of the action movie genre. Bichhoo is . . . well, it’s not a great film, but it’s a good one. And because it sticks so closely to the original, the changes are shown in sharp relief.
Kiran (Rani Mukherjee) is thrilled by the prospect of a visit from her brother (Sachin Khedekar); he’s the one pleasant person in her family. Sadly, her brother’s visit comes at precisely the wrong time; Kiran’s father (Mohan Joshi) is a small time drugrunner who has just cheated Devraj Khatri (Ashish Vidyarthi) drug lord and head of the Narcotics branch of the Mumbai police. Devraj and his goons kill off the entire family; Kiran happens to be delivering milk to the neighbor at the time, and looks through the keyhole just in time to see her beloved brother being gunned down.
Luckily, the neighbor in question is Jeeva (Bobby Deol), a hit man with a conscience. Jeeva saves her life again when she calls the police and Devraj’s men show up to kill her; after that, he’s stuck with her, despite his better judgement.
Kiran wants Jeeva to train her; he wants her to go away. The pair naturally fall in love while dodging Devraj’s men, but their moment of happiness can’t last forever, and it all leads to an apocalyptic final confrontation.
Bobby Deol is no Aamir Khan, but he’s really very effective here; Jeeva has clearly been beaten down by life, but we see flashes of humanity creep in as Kiran manages to reawaken his emotions. Rani mostly acquits herself well, though she often seems to be playing just a little too young, and her normally husky voice sounds downright hoarse at times. Ashish Vidyarthi is wonderfully menacing as Devraj.
The action scenes are good, though the best ones are directly lifted from Leon. The songs are mostly forgettable. The first number is a little odd; it cuts between an open air anti-drug concert and scenes of Bobby Deol walking through the streets of Mumbai, and the two never really intersect.
The whole film will seem very familiar to anyone who’s seen Leon. It’s the characters who make the difference. Most obviously, the leads in Bichhoo don’t have the extreme age difference of the leads in Leon. Kiran is a college student, and Jeeva is a fairly young man. There are deeper differences, though. Jean Reno’s Leon is in many ways an undeveloped person; there’s a vague mention of him getting into some trouble over a woman, but he’s clearly never had a real life. All he knows is killing, until Natalie Portman’s Matilda shows him howm to live. Jeeva, on the other hand, once had a real job (as a clerk in a video store), a family (including a mother, naturally played by Farida Jalal), and even the World’s Most Annoying Girlfriend (Malaika Arora). We see Jeeva’s life brutally stripped from him, and he’s left a broken shell of a man; in public he’s polite and soft spoken, at home he literally sits and stares at the wall, and he only seems to come alive when working. Where Leon kills quickly, and in the most direct manner possible, Jeeva toys with his prey. He leaves threatening messages, employs flamboyant disguises, and will even beat a target up before getting around to shooting them. He behaves, in other words, exactly like a man with a deathwish.
That deathwish is what leads to the biggest change of all, the change in theme. Leon’s leads are emotionally underdeveloped; they’re both discovering human contact for the first time. Bichhoo, on the other hand, is a love story between two deeply wounded souls. In the end, Matilda gains the ability to connect to other people, to “put down roots”, and a houseplant to reinforce the metaphor. Kiran loses everything; she’s left with a bag of money and a pet scorpion. The notes are the same, but the music is very different.
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