Motherhood is a very big deal in Bollywood. No matter who bad a
character appears, if they love their mother, it’s clear that they are a
Nice Indian Girl or a Good Indian Boy at heart, and they’ll be redeemed
before the end of the film. If you marry without your mother’s
approval, you will suffer for it, no matter how true the love and how
unreasonable your mother has been. If your dead mother asks you to
reunite your father with his college sweetheart, you do it. And, as we
learn in Karan Arjun (1995), you never, ever even think about harming a mother. They have powers.
Thakur Durjan Singh (Amrish Puri) is a very bad man. After his brother married a poor woman, Durjan tracked him down and killed him. When his ailing father tries to make peace with the widow, Durga (Raakhee), and her sons Karan (Salman Khan) and Arjun (Shahrukh Khan), Durjan kills him. And just because he’s a completist, he ambushes Durga on the way home and he and his men brutally slaughter Karan and Arjun in front of her. Durga flees to the local temple of Kali, and asks the goddess for vengeance; she appeals to Kali as one mother to another, and asks her to restore the “weapons of a mother”, her sons. At that moment, miles away, two boys are born into two very different families. Cue opening credits.
Vijay (Shahrukh Khan) works on the horse ranch owned by his “Uncle”, a close friend of his deceased parents. He’s a skilled rider, a crack shot with a slingshot, and charming enough to gain the affections of Sonia (Kajol), the daughter of wealthy arms dealer Saxena (Ranjeet.) This is a dangerous relationship, since Sonia has been promised to Suraj Singh (Aashif Sheikh), son of Saxena’s business partner Durjan Singh.
Life has been much harder for Ajay (Salman Khan). His mother died in childbirth, and he was raised by a brutal alcoholic father (Suresh Chatwal). He’s adored by the local tomboy, Bindiya (Mamta Kulkarni), but doesn’t pay any attention to her. Ajay is a streetfighter in a brutal underground circuit. To pay for an operation for his dying father, Ajay agrees to take a dive. he can’t go through with it, though; during the fight, he’s assaulted by visions of a fight he doesn’t remember, and suddenly starts fighting for his life. Despite this failure, he’s given the money by a mysterious stranger, and Ajay repays this generosity by working as an enforcer for his benefactor, Saxena.
Meanwhile, Durga has become the village madwoman. Despite the taunts of Durjan and his men, she sits in Kali’s temple, waiting patiently for her sons to return.
There’s a remarkable economy of plot in Karan Arjun. There are no digressions for the sake of digression; every single plot twist moves the story along, and every single loose thread is disposed of before the end of the film. A minor character from the pre-credits sequence turns out to be vital to the later plotline. I can’t help but be impressed with the tight plotting and the single-minded devotion to genre. This is a revenge melodrama, and it never loses sight of that fact.
Because of this single-mindedness, though, there’s not much room for humor here. Sure, Vijay’s sidekick is played by Johnny Lever, but Johnny’s mugging falls flatter than usual; he provides comic relief in the Shakespearean sense, commenting on the action without ever successfully being funny.
It’s Shahrukh who really suffers from the lack of humor, since being funny and charming is a large part of his persona. That’s missing here, and there really isn’t anything brought in to replace it. SRK does a fine job, but the part really could have been played by anyone. Karan/Ajay, on the other hand, is a great part, and Salman really rises to the challenge. Ajay is dark, brooding, driven, cynical, and very different from anything I’ve seen Salman do before. Kajol and Mamta Kulkarni, on the other hand, have very little to do. They are the Love Interests, and they never really stray from the confines of that role.
Amrish Puri is in Mogambo mode here. Durjan is unabashedly eeeeevil, and Puri doesn’t shy away from it. Raakhee (yes, two a’s) is similarly effective as the vengeful specter of wronged motherhood. In both cases, the nature of the role forces the actor to go over the top; they’re really archetypes rather than individual people, and both Puri and Raakhee understand that.
The music is mostly unremarkable, though I was very impressed by a sinister number in which Vijay and Ajay reveal themselves to Durjan during a ceremony in Kali’s temple, and I also quite liked the “Hey, arms dealers! Look over here, we’re distracting you!” song.
This is a very violent (though not gory) film, and it doesn’t pretend otherwise. There’s no scene where the hero shows mercy, but the villain reaches for a gun and the hero has to shoot him anyway. Durjan and friends are irredeemably evil, and Vijay and Ajay behave accordingly. If that means shooting an unarmed man before he gets a chance to fight back, they shoot an unarmed man before he gets a chance to fight back. They’re also not too worried about cruelty to animals; at one point Salman punches a horse!
Karan Arjun is not an ambitious film. It’s a revenge melodrama, and it clearly, cleanly and efficiently presents itself as such. I’m not a fan of the genre, personally, but I can’t help but admire how well crafted this particular revenge story is.
Thakur Durjan Singh (Amrish Puri) is a very bad man. After his brother married a poor woman, Durjan tracked him down and killed him. When his ailing father tries to make peace with the widow, Durga (Raakhee), and her sons Karan (Salman Khan) and Arjun (Shahrukh Khan), Durjan kills him. And just because he’s a completist, he ambushes Durga on the way home and he and his men brutally slaughter Karan and Arjun in front of her. Durga flees to the local temple of Kali, and asks the goddess for vengeance; she appeals to Kali as one mother to another, and asks her to restore the “weapons of a mother”, her sons. At that moment, miles away, two boys are born into two very different families. Cue opening credits.
Vijay (Shahrukh Khan) works on the horse ranch owned by his “Uncle”, a close friend of his deceased parents. He’s a skilled rider, a crack shot with a slingshot, and charming enough to gain the affections of Sonia (Kajol), the daughter of wealthy arms dealer Saxena (Ranjeet.) This is a dangerous relationship, since Sonia has been promised to Suraj Singh (Aashif Sheikh), son of Saxena’s business partner Durjan Singh.
Life has been much harder for Ajay (Salman Khan). His mother died in childbirth, and he was raised by a brutal alcoholic father (Suresh Chatwal). He’s adored by the local tomboy, Bindiya (Mamta Kulkarni), but doesn’t pay any attention to her. Ajay is a streetfighter in a brutal underground circuit. To pay for an operation for his dying father, Ajay agrees to take a dive. he can’t go through with it, though; during the fight, he’s assaulted by visions of a fight he doesn’t remember, and suddenly starts fighting for his life. Despite this failure, he’s given the money by a mysterious stranger, and Ajay repays this generosity by working as an enforcer for his benefactor, Saxena.
Meanwhile, Durga has become the village madwoman. Despite the taunts of Durjan and his men, she sits in Kali’s temple, waiting patiently for her sons to return.
There’s a remarkable economy of plot in Karan Arjun. There are no digressions for the sake of digression; every single plot twist moves the story along, and every single loose thread is disposed of before the end of the film. A minor character from the pre-credits sequence turns out to be vital to the later plotline. I can’t help but be impressed with the tight plotting and the single-minded devotion to genre. This is a revenge melodrama, and it never loses sight of that fact.
Because of this single-mindedness, though, there’s not much room for humor here. Sure, Vijay’s sidekick is played by Johnny Lever, but Johnny’s mugging falls flatter than usual; he provides comic relief in the Shakespearean sense, commenting on the action without ever successfully being funny.
It’s Shahrukh who really suffers from the lack of humor, since being funny and charming is a large part of his persona. That’s missing here, and there really isn’t anything brought in to replace it. SRK does a fine job, but the part really could have been played by anyone. Karan/Ajay, on the other hand, is a great part, and Salman really rises to the challenge. Ajay is dark, brooding, driven, cynical, and very different from anything I’ve seen Salman do before. Kajol and Mamta Kulkarni, on the other hand, have very little to do. They are the Love Interests, and they never really stray from the confines of that role.
Amrish Puri is in Mogambo mode here. Durjan is unabashedly eeeeevil, and Puri doesn’t shy away from it. Raakhee (yes, two a’s) is similarly effective as the vengeful specter of wronged motherhood. In both cases, the nature of the role forces the actor to go over the top; they’re really archetypes rather than individual people, and both Puri and Raakhee understand that.
The music is mostly unremarkable, though I was very impressed by a sinister number in which Vijay and Ajay reveal themselves to Durjan during a ceremony in Kali’s temple, and I also quite liked the “Hey, arms dealers! Look over here, we’re distracting you!” song.
This is a very violent (though not gory) film, and it doesn’t pretend otherwise. There’s no scene where the hero shows mercy, but the villain reaches for a gun and the hero has to shoot him anyway. Durjan and friends are irredeemably evil, and Vijay and Ajay behave accordingly. If that means shooting an unarmed man before he gets a chance to fight back, they shoot an unarmed man before he gets a chance to fight back. They’re also not too worried about cruelty to animals; at one point Salman punches a horse!
Karan Arjun is not an ambitious film. It’s a revenge melodrama, and it clearly, cleanly and efficiently presents itself as such. I’m not a fan of the genre, personally, but I can’t help but admire how well crafted this particular revenge story is.
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