Sunny Deol found his Gadar 2 formula with his debut film Betaab and 40 years later, it’s still working for him

Rahul Rawail’s Betaab marked the debut of Sunny Deol and Amrita Singh. (Photo: Express Archives)

Betaab has a fairly simple story where a boy and girl, who come from different economic backgrounds fall in love with the woman’s father, played by Shammi Kapoor, fighting to keep them apart but it all ends with a happily ever after. It is strange to see that the film, that could have been the make or break point of Javed’s career since he was writing a film’s script all by himself for the first time, depended more on its music and locations more than its storytelling.

Betaab was shot in Kashmir and it focused heavily on its locations. If you have visited Kashmir at any point since the early 1980s, there is no way that you haven’t been directed towards ‘Betaab valley’. The film worked as a showreel for Sunny who is showcased as the boy-next-door, action hero, lover boy, adorable son, rebel, and everything else that a mainstream actor might have needed in the 1980s. He walks around bare chested, rides on horses, and kicks like he is his father’s spitting image and glides through the film. It is hard to dissect a successful film from the 1980s and find out what actually worked for it. Sure, we can speculate but there isn’t a formula that guarantees a hit film but Sunny probably knew what was working for him and stuck to it. Even 40 years later, he is still doing the same thing.

Sunny has gone through long dull patches in his career where his films were either not connecting with the audience, or were just not massy enough for them, but every single time he had a blockbuster (Ghayal, Damini, Ghatak, Border and Gadar), it came from the same formula.  The formula being – throw punches with all confidence in the world and scream at a decibel high enough that the audience has to listen to you. Betaab had it, and so does Gadar 2.

Unlike many other actors who have gone through their own kind of evolution in the last few decades – Salman transforming from the lovable Prem to Bhai, Shah Rukh experimenting a bit apart from the being the quintessential lover boy, Akshay Kumar going from action to comedy to dabbling in a few other genres, and Aamir Khan experimenting with every other film that he picks – Sunny has stuck to his guns. Some might wonder if he craves to be different but looks like, the actor is still ruling the box office with a 40 year old formula. And if the box office, which is an indication of the masses loving it, is still in his favour, why would he even dare to be different?