Director of Amitabh Bachchan’s cult classic thriller denies plagiarising Quentin Tarantino’s original, says he’s never even seen it: ‘It was boring’

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At the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles many years ago, Tarantino made comments about Kaante, and singled out the performance of the ‘big beard guy’, aka Amitabh Bachchan. He said, according to The Times of India, “I think it was fabulous. Of the many rip-offs (of Reservoir Dogs) I loved Hong Kong’s Too Many Ways To Be No.1 and this one, Kaante. The best part is, you have Indian guys coming to the US and looting a US bank. How cool is that! I was truly honoured. And these guys are played by the legends of Bollywood. Here I am, watching a film that I’ve directed and then it goes into each character’s background. And I’m like, ‘Whoa’. For, I always write backgrounds and stuff and it always gets chopped off during the edit. And so I was amazed on seeing this. I felt, this isn’t Reservoir Dogs. But then it goes into the warehouse scene and I am like, ‘Wow, it’s back to Reservoir Dogs’. Isn’t it amazing!”

In a previous interview on the Timeout with Ankit YouTube channel, Sanjay Gupta said, “So Tarantino himself has gone on record and stated that he prefers Kaante over Reservoir Dogs and he said ‘I love how he has brought in all the back stories of the characters’. Every time he meets a bunch of Indian filmmakers, the first thing he talks about is Kaante,” he said, and added, “He doesn’t need to say that some kid sitting in Bombay has made a better film than mine but he says it.” He called people “ignorant” and said that they don’t know that “Reservoir Dogs itself is a remake of a Hong Kong film, City on Fire.”