Baazigar at 30: Was Shah Rukh Khan really the ‘angry young man’ in Baazigar and did we just mislabel him as the bad guy?

Shah Rukh Khan and Rakhee in a still from the film. (Photo: Express Archives)

The ‘angry young man’ is perennially associated with Amitabh Bachchan whose Vijay was the personification of the common man’s angst. Vijay was fighting against systemic oppression, was upset about the class divide and had lost all hope from the unjust system. He decided to make his own way and declared that morality was an outdated concept for him. Since then, Salim-Javed have often reiterated that they did not write Vijay as a symbol of rebellion. It just so happened that their environment and society inspired their writing. So the socio-political influence of Vijay and why he connected with the masses was a post-mortem activity for them too. But in essence, Vijay, in most movies, was motivated by vengeance because someone had wronged either him or his family.

And in essence, that’s exactly what Shah Rukh Khan’s Ajay/Vicky does in Baazigar. He is a guy who saw his father die on a stormy night and his infant sister breathed her last in his arms. His mother hasn’t been stable for over 15 years at this point and the only thing that has kept him going is the idea of vengeance from Dalip Tahil’s Madan Chopra. This is exactly what makes him a contender for the title of the ‘angry young man’.

Kajol, Dalip Tahil and Shilpa Shetty in Baazigar. (Photo: Express Archives)

Ajay/Vicky is a cold-blooded killer who chews up the evidence (literally) and does not bat an eyelid when he tricks an innocent woman into writing her own suicide note. In fact, he does it with a laugh. He is sinister and menacing but through it all, he can justify his actions in his head and since the audience is watching the story unfold from his point of view, they see his reason. And this is probably why the audience cheers for him throughout the movie. In a chat with Pinkvilla, director duo Abbas-Mustan recalled the first day-first show of the film and how the audience reacted to that now-iconic scene where Ajay throws Seema off the building. Abbas-Mustan said that there was a collective gasp when he threw her off, but as he exited the building in the next scene and walked away discreetly without raising any suspicion, the audience applauded.

Film analysts like to use the term ‘risky’ a fair bit when they are discussing yesteryear films, or even the contemporary ones, and anything that goes out of the socially approved moral boundary is casually called ‘risky’. But that’s not really a parameter for an audience member when they watch a film. They just react to what they are watching and will gladly root for a guy who has killed three people in a three-hour movie. Abbas Mustan shared in the same conversation that the concept of trailers did not exist when Baazigar came out so the audience wasn’t expecting that Shah Rukh’s character would throw Shilpa’s character from the terrace but this shock took them by surprise. And since they had already seen a glimpse of his traumatic childhood, they believed his actions were justified in the scope of this story. Of course, morality would dictate that Ajay fights via the legal system but that wouldn’t make him a ‘baazigar’ who can jet off on a race track and come up with iconic dialogues that still have a place in pop culture.

Shah Rukh was still an up-and-comer when Baazigar came out and playing a man with grey shades, who is simply motivated by his love for his mother and his family, gave him a heroic edge. His actions were not noble but his goal was. It was this heroic edge that worked for Bachchan in the 70s as well. Shah Rukh played another version of this so-called ‘anti-hero’ in Anjaam as well but soon after, he landed Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge and as we know, he then became the ‘lover boy’ of the country. It was perhaps the range that he showcased between Baazigar and DDLJ that made the audience fall in love with him even more.

Like many other 90s films, Baazigar isn’t perfect. The abrupt comedy breaks, the over-the-top makeup, and the really dumb detective work that can be dismantled in seconds don’t really make for a good thriller but Baazigar isn’t that. It’s the story of a man seeking revenge for his family that suffered at the hands of the evil Madan Chopra and by the end, you want him to kill Madan Chopra. But like those angry young man stories of the 1970s, here too, the police intervenes at the last moment and Ajay meets his fate. Nevertheless, Ajay has accomplished what he set out to and when he declares that to his mother in his dying moments, you don’t think him of him as an ‘anti-hero’. You find justification for his actions and with Kumar Sanu belting out the ‘sad version’ of the title song, you sing along because by now you believe ‘haar ke jeetne vale ko Baazigar kehte hain’.