Return of the desi badass
The bad boys have been kicking up a storm at the Bolly box-office. Is it time for our chikna heroes to take a backseat?
Move over chest-waxing, eyebrow-tweaking, metrosexual mainstream Bollywood hero. There is a new breed of men that is taking the box office by storm — that of the desi badass. These unscrupulous characters captivate the audience with their devil-may-care persona, their vocabulary is laced with innuendo and although they aren’t weighed down by any moral baggage, they possess a heart of gold which redeems them in the eyes of the audience at the end of the film. Earlier, the protagonist was an uni-dimensional moral compass of the movie, his foil, the villain was depicted as full of sin and beaten up to pulp to restore the social order in the climax. But as the tides have changed, so has the morality of the leading man.
Leading the pack of desi badass-ery is Dabangg Robin Hood Pandey who can be credited for bringing the rough-hewn, rugged, alpha male back to commercial Indian cinema. Actor Salman Khan’s Chulbul Pandey is a cop with a heart of gold and morals of a sieve. Following him closely is the neon green ganji sporting, pelvic thrusting Parma (actor Arjun Kapoor) of Ishaqzaade, who with his bearded charm and half smile, is unafraid of pointing a gun at the female lead in the first half of the film and killing himself for love. Hard to ignore is Shiva (actor Akshay Kumar) of Rowdy Rathore who constantly refers to his lady love as ‘maal’, delights in pinching her midriff when not making emphatic threats of ‘Don’t angry me!’
Manoj Bajpayee, who caught cinegoers’ fancy more than a decade ago as the loud underworld goon Bhikhu Mhatre, seems to have come a full circle with Sardar Khan, the lecherous, datoon chewing, surma wearing thug from the Gangs of Wasseypur, who stabs and shoots his enemies with the same ease with which he delivers terse one liners and abuses. “Bhikhu Mhatre seems mild when compared to Sardar Khan, who is ruthless and has no sense of right or wrong. It is for the first time that the audience has loved a character who harbours no remorse about his deeds,” he says, adding, “The audiences wants their money’s worth when they enter the theatre, and if the story presented is engrossing enough then characters, good or bad, are retained.”
Says trade analyst Taran Adarsh, “Characters that have shades of grey and are not doodh ka dhula showcase the changing times. These characters are real and thus easy for people to identify with, which is the reason for their popularity. Dancing around trees or the Swiss Alps is passé.” He also cites other films Paan Singh Tomar and Agneepath as films that featured desi ruffians.
Trade Analyst Komal Nahta believes that “the audience is bored of seeing the same old metrosexual hero. The rawness of these characters, which is a necessity for desi action movies, has tremendous mass appeal. If the film does well the antics of the hero are imitated by the masses causing characters like that of a Chulbul Pandey to be etched in our minds for a long time.”
The bad boys have been kicking up a storm at the Bolly box-office. Is it time for our chikna heroes to take a backseat?
Move over chest-waxing, eyebrow-tweaking, metrosexual mainstream Bollywood hero. There is a new breed of men that is taking the box office by storm — that of the desi badass. These unscrupulous characters captivate the audience with their devil-may-care persona, their vocabulary is laced with innuendo and although they aren’t weighed down by any moral baggage, they possess a heart of gold which redeems them in the eyes of the audience at the end of the film. Earlier, the protagonist was an uni-dimensional moral compass of the movie, his foil, the villain was depicted as full of sin and beaten up to pulp to restore the social order in the climax. But as the tides have changed, so has the morality of the leading man.
Leading the pack of desi badass-ery is Dabangg Robin Hood Pandey who can be credited for bringing the rough-hewn, rugged, alpha male back to commercial Indian cinema. Actor Salman Khan’s Chulbul Pandey is a cop with a heart of gold and morals of a sieve. Following him closely is the neon green ganji sporting, pelvic thrusting Parma (actor Arjun Kapoor) of Ishaqzaade, who with his bearded charm and half smile, is unafraid of pointing a gun at the female lead in the first half of the film and killing himself for love. Hard to ignore is Shiva (actor Akshay Kumar) of Rowdy Rathore who constantly refers to his lady love as ‘maal’, delights in pinching her midriff when not making emphatic threats of ‘Don’t angry me!’
Manoj Bajpayee, who caught cinegoers’ fancy more than a decade ago as the loud underworld goon Bhikhu Mhatre, seems to have come a full circle with Sardar Khan, the lecherous, datoon chewing, surma wearing thug from the Gangs of Wasseypur, who stabs and shoots his enemies with the same ease with which he delivers terse one liners and abuses. “Bhikhu Mhatre seems mild when compared to Sardar Khan, who is ruthless and has no sense of right or wrong. It is for the first time that the audience has loved a character who harbours no remorse about his deeds,” he says, adding, “The audiences wants their money’s worth when they enter the theatre, and if the story presented is engrossing enough then characters, good or bad, are retained.”
Says trade analyst Taran Adarsh, “Characters that have shades of grey and are not doodh ka dhula showcase the changing times. These characters are real and thus easy for people to identify with, which is the reason for their popularity. Dancing around trees or the Swiss Alps is passé.” He also cites other films Paan Singh Tomar and Agneepath as films that featured desi ruffians.
Trade Analyst Komal Nahta believes that “the audience is bored of seeing the same old metrosexual hero. The rawness of these characters, which is a necessity for desi action movies, has tremendous mass appeal. If the film does well the antics of the hero are imitated by the masses causing characters like that of a Chulbul Pandey to be etched in our minds for a long time.”
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