Narasimha

1991 214’ col Hindi d/p/s N. Chandra pc N. Chandra Prod. lyr Javed Akhtar c Binod Pradhan m Laxmikant-Pyarelal lp Sunny Deol, Dimple Kapadia, Om Puri, Urmila, Ravi Behl, Babban Yadav, Satish Shah, Guddi Maruti, Sharat Saxena, Usha Nadkarni, Shafi Inamdar, Om Shivpuri, Nivedita Joshi, Brij Gopal, Shail Chaturvedi

Baapji (Om Puri) is the self-styled king of a township. His loyal lieutenant Narasimha (Sunny Deol) commits the crimes for him. Baapji kills the only honest policeman who attempts to arrest him, and the cop’s son, who is in love with Baapji’s daughter, is severely beaten. Baapji’s daughter drives off a mountainside and declares that she will do worse if her father does her boyfriend any more harm. When Baapji asks Narasimha to expel the policeman’s family from the town, Narasimha recalls his own homeless past, reforms and turns against his mentor. The film updates Vishnu Purana’s legend: Narasimha, half man and half lion, bursts out of a pillar to destroy the evil Hiranyakashapu. Sunny Deol, acting in the Rambo-style, performs the mythological act shortly after he has been chained and whipped, and then goes on almost single-handedly to destroy Baapji’s mansion, allowing the young lovers to be united. The villain is killed through divine intervention as he is impaled by the falling hand of a giant clock. Chandra’s visceral camerawork matches the performance of the muscular Deol and together they amount to a savage argument in defence of a revivalist mass culture.

Film