Phool Aur Kaante

1992 173’ col/scope Hindi d Kuku Kohli p Dinesh Patel pc Sonu Films s Iqbal Durrani lyr Sameer, Rani Malik c Thomas A. Xavier m Nadeem-Shravan lp Amrish Puri, Ajay Devgun, Jagdeep, Madhu Raghunath, Arif Khan, Aruna Irani, Satyen Kappu, Raza Murad

The hit film that introduced Devgun as a new star for the 90s. The plot is a drama about machismo in which the orphaned Ajay (Devgun) battles the drug-peddling son of his college trustee. When violence breaks out, he is mysteriously saved by a mafia don (Puri) who, it turns out, is his unacknowledged father. Ajay marries and has a son who is kidnapped, first by the gangster-father and then again by the don’s enemies. Ajay is reconciled with his father and together they eventually confront the real villains of the story. Much of the film’s violence is choreographed more effectively than is usual in Hindi films (cf. the locker-room fight in the men’s hostel and the hero’s Mad Max-type motor-cycle stunts). The virtual absence of a romantic sub-plot is typical of the aggressive crime thriller, using extensive political references, that came to dominate 90s Hindi cinema (cf. Prahaar, 1991). The several musical hits confirmed the music directors Nadeem-Shravan as major film composers of the early 90s.

Film