Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag

If you meddle with history, prepare to be shot. Ram Gopal Varma rejigs Ramesh Sippy8217;s Sholay for 2007, and comes up with a clunker.

Back in 1975, Bollywood was struggling to come up with an idiom which would be right for the times. The one-size-fits-all shoe had dropped, and most movies were dying like flies. And then along came Sholay, which packed everything in its punch 8211; thrilling action, romance, comedy, tragedy. It was a smorgasbord, a veritable feast, the like of which we had never seen before. And judging by what RGV has made of it, we never will.

You go in, girded for difference. The bitter spat between the Sippys and RGV, and the fallout, has been publicised well enough for us to know that the latter has transplanted Ramgarh to Mumbai, that Jai is Raj Prashant, Veeru is Heero Ajay, Thakur Baldev Singh is Narasimha Mohanlal, Basanti is Ghunghroo Nisha. And Gabbar Singh 8212; was there ever a more satisfying name for a villa8211;n-is Babban Amitabh Bachchan.

The storyline stays faithful to the original. Inspector Narasimha captures Babban, who escapes, and kills the cop8217;s family: only the widow Durga Sushmita remains. Raj and Heero are hired to help catch Babban, and the end is bloody and long.

Ramgarh was much a character in Sholay as its others. RGV Ki Aag gets down and dirty in deserted, faceless warehouses, becoming just another of Ramu8217;s gangster movies, but way, way below his double whammy of Satya, and Company. In those, he re-wrote the rules of gangsta films in Bollywood; in Aag, he8217;s just knocking around with a classic, and knocking it, in the process.

Raj and Heero have about as much impact as the inert scenery. Whatever possessed Ramu to cast a personality-less newcomer in Amitabh8217;s iconic role? And whatever possessed Ajay to take this on? Sushmita appears as artificial as her chalky white make-up: Jaya Bachchan, in her brief cameo, had inhabited Sholay as much as the others. Nisha as the garrulous Basanti is a bad joke. So is Urmila Matondkar, who reprises Helen in Mehbooba: Ms M is certainly a 8216;booba8217;, and not much else.

Only Amitabh has heft. As Babban, scar decorating the bridge of his nose, he looks good at being bad. But in no scene, even the one in which he is busy slicing off Mohanlal8217;s fingers, is he feral, the quality that made Amjad immortal. And Sholay the movie it was.

Go back. Dig out the DVD of the original. Watch it.