Izzat Ki Roti (1993) follows in the grand Bollywood
tradition of movies with extensive backstories to drive a very simple
plot. In this case, the backstory involves Vijay (Khulbushan Kharbanda)
and Veeru (Prem Chopra), two truck drivers. The two are close friends,
but while Vijay is a pious, forthright, and honorable family man, Veeru
is a bit more morally flexible; when he’s approached by an unnamed but
evil foreign government about smuggling narcotics into India, he is
happy to oblige. He’s not a very good smuggler, though, and after
crashing through a police barricade, he is promptly captured by Vijay,
and led off to jail, vowing revenge.
Meanwhile, Veeru’s distraught girlfriend discovers that she’s pregnant. She lives just long enough to deliver a son, and then drops dead of a broken heart. Lakshmi (Tanuja), Vijay’s wife, adopts the child, swearing to be his Yasoda. The couple soon have another son, and as the years pass Vijay becomes a successful businessman and the owner of the Malhotra Transport Company. He celebrates his success by driving too fast, and is killed in a car crash.
Years later, the Malhotra Transport Company is still a success. Sensible older brother Krishna (Rishi Kapoor) manages the business, while wise-cracking younger brother Jeet (Sunny Deol) beats up all of the assorted underworld goons who try to extort money from them.
The brothers are nice Indian boys, as shown by their obvious affection towards their mother. And, this being Bollywood, they each have their own respective love interest. Krishna has been seeing Pinky (Farha Naaz) for a year, but they’ve been keeping the relationship a secret for . . . no particular reason that I can see. Jeet, meanwhile, is immediately smitten when he meets the lovely Jyoti (Juhi Chawla), and annoys her until she falls in love with him. (This is a common romantic technique in Bollywood, but it never seems to work for me. Maybe I’m not doing it right.)
Veeru is finally released from prison. He quickly rises to the top of the local underworld, mostly because he is apparently the only criminal in all of New Delhi to carry a gun. This is just the first step in Veeru’s insidious scheme to destroy the Malhotra family. At least, I think it is; it’s hard to tell, because we never find out what his scheme actually involves, apart from waiting for lucky coincidences. He does approach Pinky’s uncle Girdharilal (Anupam Kher) and offers him cheap booze and cheaper women if he will help. Girdharilal enthusiastically agrees.
After a little manipulation, Krishna and Pinky are married, and Girdharilal has moved into the Malhotra home, where he sets about driving a rift between the brothers and feeding Krishna bad business advice. It’s a lot like Othello, if Iago were a smirking, giggling sycophant rather than a master manipulator, and Othello wore a lot of sweaters. It’s hard to accept as an insidious plan because Girdharilal is mostly acting on his own initiative to make things generally worse, acting as the opportunity presents itself rather than moving toward a particular end, and because there’s no possible reason why Krishna would choose to listen to Girdharilal, who is an idiot, rather than his own brother.
I’m a Bollywood fan, though, so I can live with a little sloppy plotting. And the movie does have a fantastic cast; I love Juhi Chawla, and even the actors I hadn’t heard of before are related to actors that I like. However, there is a reason why Sunny Deol is usually cast as the bland but dependable older brother or the grim badass with a heart of gold: Sunny Deol isn’t funny. At all. Jeet is supposed to be the free-spirited, quick witted brother, and so he spends much of the first half of the movie making jokes and doing silly voices and dressing up in outrageous disguises, and it all falls flat. Sunny is Differently Charismatic; he’s fine with older, more responsible roles, but just doesn’t have the right sort of charm to pull off the part of the wacky younger brother; when Girdharilal enters the picture and takes over comic relief duties, things improve immensely. On the other hand, Sunny does do a fine Manoj Kumar impression.
Meanwhile, Veeru’s distraught girlfriend discovers that she’s pregnant. She lives just long enough to deliver a son, and then drops dead of a broken heart. Lakshmi (Tanuja), Vijay’s wife, adopts the child, swearing to be his Yasoda. The couple soon have another son, and as the years pass Vijay becomes a successful businessman and the owner of the Malhotra Transport Company. He celebrates his success by driving too fast, and is killed in a car crash.
Years later, the Malhotra Transport Company is still a success. Sensible older brother Krishna (Rishi Kapoor) manages the business, while wise-cracking younger brother Jeet (Sunny Deol) beats up all of the assorted underworld goons who try to extort money from them.
The brothers are nice Indian boys, as shown by their obvious affection towards their mother. And, this being Bollywood, they each have their own respective love interest. Krishna has been seeing Pinky (Farha Naaz) for a year, but they’ve been keeping the relationship a secret for . . . no particular reason that I can see. Jeet, meanwhile, is immediately smitten when he meets the lovely Jyoti (Juhi Chawla), and annoys her until she falls in love with him. (This is a common romantic technique in Bollywood, but it never seems to work for me. Maybe I’m not doing it right.)
Veeru is finally released from prison. He quickly rises to the top of the local underworld, mostly because he is apparently the only criminal in all of New Delhi to carry a gun. This is just the first step in Veeru’s insidious scheme to destroy the Malhotra family. At least, I think it is; it’s hard to tell, because we never find out what his scheme actually involves, apart from waiting for lucky coincidences. He does approach Pinky’s uncle Girdharilal (Anupam Kher) and offers him cheap booze and cheaper women if he will help. Girdharilal enthusiastically agrees.
After a little manipulation, Krishna and Pinky are married, and Girdharilal has moved into the Malhotra home, where he sets about driving a rift between the brothers and feeding Krishna bad business advice. It’s a lot like Othello, if Iago were a smirking, giggling sycophant rather than a master manipulator, and Othello wore a lot of sweaters. It’s hard to accept as an insidious plan because Girdharilal is mostly acting on his own initiative to make things generally worse, acting as the opportunity presents itself rather than moving toward a particular end, and because there’s no possible reason why Krishna would choose to listen to Girdharilal, who is an idiot, rather than his own brother.
I’m a Bollywood fan, though, so I can live with a little sloppy plotting. And the movie does have a fantastic cast; I love Juhi Chawla, and even the actors I hadn’t heard of before are related to actors that I like. However, there is a reason why Sunny Deol is usually cast as the bland but dependable older brother or the grim badass with a heart of gold: Sunny Deol isn’t funny. At all. Jeet is supposed to be the free-spirited, quick witted brother, and so he spends much of the first half of the movie making jokes and doing silly voices and dressing up in outrageous disguises, and it all falls flat. Sunny is Differently Charismatic; he’s fine with older, more responsible roles, but just doesn’t have the right sort of charm to pull off the part of the wacky younger brother; when Girdharilal enters the picture and takes over comic relief duties, things improve immensely. On the other hand, Sunny does do a fine Manoj Kumar impression.
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