Agneepath (2012)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Fresh and Exciting

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

If you consider the story, there is nothing new in this film. Gangs fight, revenge, underworld are the premises set in this action drama film, which is a remake of a 90s Amitabh Bachchan starrer movie with the same name. Despite certain shortcomings in the story, the treatment of the film makes the film pretty watchable. The plot of the movie is pretty simple, a son avenging his father's murder after 15 years. But the brutality, blood and gore is exceedingly poured in this film making it unsuitable to be watched with your family. The camera work and color combination used in the film make it visually appealing. However, the film is overlong. It starts well, climax is stunning but the central of the film gets pretty dragging and muddled. The film starts to breathe at certain of its moments and gets dragging at instances due to its over-length. Hritik in the central role doesn't look very dashing and seem to be miscast for his poor dialogues delivery. Instead, Rishi Kapoor and Sanjay Dutt freshen the screen with their taut performances and dialogues. Hritik Roshan lacks that tautness in his role. In other words, the performances from the thespians from 90s can be called the saving graces in this revenge saga. Overall, this overlong brutal saga is interesting in parts for the taut performances from Rishi kapoor and Sanjay Dutt, visual appeal, and few nice melodramatic sequences.Rating: 2 stars out of 4

Each time I watch this and as it gets older and older, I happen to come to admire this classic more and more, a lot of which though can be put down to myself being a huge fan of Sanjay Dutt and quite an admirer of Hrithik Roshan too (his best film in my opinion. Awesome performance by him!). I know people have this habit of over-rating things from the past, but in my opinion there is no match at all between this and the one in 1990. This classic is a story of blood and flames, of emotions and vengeance, respect and hatred, above all, immense brutality. This beats any of the million Bollywood films, particularly made in the 1980s and 1990s, that revolve around the hero wanting to avenge his father's killing.From Vijay to Gaitonde sahib to Kaali to Lala Rauf, everyone was brilliant but a special mention should go to Kaancha. What a stunning performance! It goes down as one of the best performances ever in the negative roles. His reciting the Bhagavad Geeta throughout the film and coming up with his own twisted interpretations itself was a unique idea that added so much to his role, coupled with the way he looked. Can't help but think that his role was somewhat inspired from the historical description and depiction of the Pharaoh who opposed Prophet Moses. Just a thought.....As for the emotions aspect, not too many scenes would touch you as much as the the scene from this film does when Shiksha visits Vijay for the first time to meet him, and then that brilliant song "Abhi mujh mey'n kahi'n..... " Truly depicts in a great way as if Vijay had found his world.The 'Agneepath' poem by Harivansh Rai Bachchan is such an inspirational one that I couldn't resist basing one of my own poems upon it, titled as "Walk in the sunshine." So I have got bit of a personal attachment too with this film due to that.If I had to come back to the film from 1990, I don't want to go into any deeper details given that the review by itself is about the 2012 film, but in short I would just add that I felt really annoyed and irritated with the way Amitabh Bachchan spoke in the film, and the same applies to Mithun Chakraborty's role - a South Indian Pathan (considering his background shown and the way he talked)! Kaancha's role however in that too was well performed by Danny Denzongpa, who was in general a very good actor. The mere look on his face made him look like a villain.

Malhotra had one thing very clear in his mind: he wanted to make a brutal, visceral film. He wanted to make something that will appeal to the primal senses of male section of the audience. That is why the situations and dialogues cross many lines of decency. This is no ordinary namby-pamby Dharma production. Even the usual music played alongwith the Dharma Productions' logo (the tune of "Kuch Kuch Kota Hai") is changed to the upbeat dhol-taasha of "Deva Shree Ganesha".Unfortunately, too much of anything starts to grate after a while. The thumping, rustic background score which sounds as a welcome respite from the typical piano-violin type scores we get to hear in so many other Indian films eventually ends up becoming a headache just like Amar Mohile's much-maligned score of Sarkar (another crime flick set in Mumbai and with Maharashtrian background).The film fails to achieve the high levels of emotional drama played out in the original. The mother-son fracas is largely avoided and when it is finally touched upon, it is let go too soon without any emotional high point. Still, what comes as a surprise is the scene/sequence where Shiksha meets and spends a day with Vijay. It is the most touching and involving sequence in the entire film and for a short while you actually think that you are watching a film where human emotions do carry some weight and are not steamrollered under the weight of cold inhumanity which the film otherwise revels to show and wallow in.Rishi Kapoor's second inning as an actor has now well and truly begun and I hope that it does last for a considerable while. I heard from someone/somewhere that he remarked in an interview that he has been enjoying acting much more now than he did in his heydays as a leading man because of the variety in roles and subjects that he is being offered. His casting was a masterstroke; not as much because he is a capable actor but because it was so unexpected. Not many people would have believed that he had it in him to play such a vicious, immoral character whom we end up loving to hate. The lines that he has to mouth and the attitude he has to sport are a stark contrast to all his earlier good guy roles. In fact, we can extend it to the roles played by all the males of Kapoor family. I wonder if his mother Krishna Raj Kapoor made her erstwhile good lad wash his mouth out with soap and phenyle after this? Kidding.This one piece of casting stands out in stark contrast to the rest, who are uniformly miscast. The horrible example of Shabd should have drilled one thing in everyone's mind by now that Sanjay Dutt should never be given pure Hindi lines to mouth. It's hilarious to hear him pronounce "moha" as "moe". Not that he is entirely at fault; the way his character is conceived and written made me think if Malhotra and the other two writers were not on a cocaine binge all the time. Danny Denzongpa's Kancha Cheena worked because he was a familiar, archetypal villain working on familiar, archetypal lines the audience was comfortable with. Dutt's Kancha belongs to a different sort of film, not the typical good-versus-evil film which this is. Hrithik Roshan does not make any impact at all: he is either morose or displaying cheeks-and-nostril-flaring kind of anger. I do not wish to compare him to the verbose grandstanding flair of Amitabh Bachchan's Vijay Deenanath Chauhan. This Vijay is differently written. He is closer to the brooding Vijay of Deewaar than the Vijay of the original Agneepath. But Hrithik lacks the inner fire which is visible in the eyes of such a person all the time and threatens to erupt any time. Priyanka Chopra has nothing to do except shimmying in skimpy sarees, singing, dancing, injecting some minor humour and glamour and weep in some scenes. If all her scenes are edited out, nothing will be missed. Why, it will be half an hour lighter! Master Manjunath who was so believable in the original as the innocent boy who gets toughened up by circumstances is replaced by an untalented little runt who is only fit for appearing in Complan ads. Master Deenanath Chauhan in the original (Alok Nath) was loud and theatrical but at least he was believable as a passionate idealist. The actor who plays the role here just appears and then dies. No conviction of purpose is visible in him at all. All other actors are either not upto the mark or are similarly wasted.Luckily the raw and largely un-stylized action sequences are the film's intermittent high points. This is not the kind of action in most Hindi films accompanied with the "dhishkyaon" and "dhishum" style sound effects which have been such a constant source of hilarity for cinema viewers for so long. Such things only take us away from the seriousnesss of the fighting and the bloodletting. Here, when a character punches or stabs another, I could almost feel it myself.

Agneepath is just name attract me to watch movie. i am big fan of original Agneepath movie casted with Amitabh and Danny. Hritik Roshan is one of the best actor in Indian cinema now a days and he is my most favorite actor! however, Hritik is totally unfit with Agneepath movie. he can not even satisfying his character in this movie. I would give 3 points to Hritik acting against Amitabh acting in original movie. Sanjay did fantastic role and he done right with his character in this movie. he is actually overcome with his role and acting against Hritik. I am not expecting this. absolutely not. role given to Sanjay is wrong against Hritik. Sanjays role has more strangth than Hritik role! surprising me. Sanjay vs Danny 10 point vs 10. however, director and story writers fault is giving batter role to Sanjay instead of Hritik."Totally disappointing movie if you know original Agneepath."