Shakti

1982 177’ col/scope Hindi d Ramesh Sippy pc M-R Prod. p Mushir-Riaz s Salim-Javed lyr Anand Bakshi c S.M. Anwar m R.D. Burman lp Amitabh Bachchan, Dilip Kumar, Smita Patil, Raakhee, Amrish Puri, Kulbhushan Kharbanda

Ramesh Sippy’s extraordinary follow-up to his own Sholay and Chopra’s Bachchan classic Deewar (both 1975), both scripted by Salim- Javed. Bachchan plays Vijay, the criminal son of the obsessively zealous police officer Ashwini Kumar (D. Kumar). Kidnapped by the gangster J.K. Verma (Puri) as a child, he discovers that his father puts duty before paternal affection and the two become estranged. Vijay is arrested twice for crimes he did not commit and on both occasions his father insists on scrupulously following legal procedure, refusing to help his son. Eventually, echoing Raj Kapoor’s Awara (1951), Vijay finds a new father figure in K.T. Narang (Kharbanda), a hotelier and smuggler who once saved him as a child. Trapped in this dual patriarchy is Vijay’s mother Sumitra (Raakhee) who is eventually killed by Verma. The stylishly shot night-time climax on an airport runway has the father shoot his son dead. Smita Patil plays Vijay’s lover Roma. Often regarded as superior to Sholay and possibly Ramesh Sippy’s best film, it failed at the box-office.

Film