{"id":1935,"date":"2012-03-16T13:12:40","date_gmt":"2012-03-16T19:12:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/?p=1935"},"modified":"2012-03-16T13:12:40","modified_gmt":"2012-03-16T19:12:40","slug":"mumbai-b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/?p=1935","title":{"rendered":"Mumbai B"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Rajshri Productions has a lot to answer for\u2014the revival of the cloying joint family drama, preternaturally clever Pomeranians\u2014but let\u2019s give praise where it\u2019s due. The banner has produced and distributed several interesting Hindi films over the years, many of which are now available for free viewing on its YouTube channel. Agent Vinod, whose namesake opens on 23 March, is one of them. The tiny screen afforded by YouTube is sufficient to watch the Mahendra Sandhu-starrer\u2014it reins in the film\u2019s grand ambition to make a James Bond-style spy thriller on an Indian budget and makes the watching of the po-faced Sandhu much more tolerable.<\/p>\n

Although Agent Vinod has its fans\u2014a few of the faithful maintain the website www.agentvinod.com\u2014it is usually derided as an example of an Indian-style \u201cB-movie\u201d. Such movies are dismissed as poor cousins of the more lavishly produced star vehicles. Their cheesiness\u2014especially given their earnestness\u2014is the subject of countless YouTube forwards, usually accompanied by \u201cit\u2019s so bad that it\u2019s great fun\u201d comments. We don\u2019t actually have a tradition of \u201cB-movies\u201d in India, but it doesn\u2019t seem to matter. The phrase originated in the US and referred to the low-budget second movie that followed the more prestigious main feature at a double-bill screening. It now applies to any film that is trying very hard to be the real item.<\/p>\n

Agent Vinod isn\u2019t actually too different from other spy movies that came before it or existed alongside it\u2014or, for that matter, that followed the movie\u2019s release in 1977. Its plot gets increasingly preposterous and there are many unintentionally funny moments, most of which have to do with Vinod\u2019s irresistible magnetism. But this isn\u2019t the first time that women have clung to a thick-waisted man who doesn\u2019t seem to have done anything to merit the attention. Sandhu was no thespian, but several other\u2014and far more successful\u2014leading men too had strictly serviceable acting skills.<\/p>\n

New avatar: Actor Saif Ali Khan in Agent Vinod.<\/p>\n

New avatar: Actor Saif Ali Khan in Agent Vinod.<\/p>\n

Even before Agent Vinod, Indian intelligence agents were wearing ill-fitting suits, fiddling with gadgets that resembled outsized toys and trying to appear at ease in foreign climes. The cardboard sets and far-out developments in Agent Vinod aren\u2019t unique to that film. Take Don, which came a year later and is now revered as a classic. If you ignore the sharp dialogue, the funky soundtrack and the sense of fun that inhabits every frame, Don is pretty tacky. What does Don have that Agent Vinod didn\u2019t? A certain Amitabh Bachchan.<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s a star of Bachchan\u2019s wattage in the foreground, who cares about how tacky the background is? Stars can make all the difference between glory and ignominy, between so-called A- and B-movies. Everybody on the sets seems to pay more attention if a star is part of a project. The women are more glamorous, the action improves, the dialogue is better, the costume department sweats more. The overall quality improves but only up to a point\u2014the plots remain formulaic and undeveloped. It\u2019s more important to fire away memorable dialogue than to change the language of cinema.<\/p>\n

Achieving stardom is a matter of luck\u2014look at Rajesh Khanna and Rajendra Kumar, for instance. There\u2019s no telling which film or which actor will catch the fancy of viewers. Disco Danceris the subject of several spoofs and satires, but the movie was also a big hit, which means that a few hundred thousand people were either very prescient about Mithun Chakraborty or plain stupid. The Navketan Films movie Prem Pujari is an example of how star power can confuse viewers. Dev Anand\u2019s head-nodding tendency had already reached frightening proportions by 1970. In Prem Pujari, which he wrote and directed, Anand plays an Indian spy who gets briefly entangled with a Chinese agent, played by Zaheeda. Hindi cinema is littered with examples of prestige pictures in which men and women with distinctly Indian features play Chinese characters. However, Prem Pujari isn\u2019t referred to in the same language as Agent Vinod simply because of the respect for Dev Anand.<\/p>\n

The new Agent Vinod, by Sriram Johnny Gaddaar Raghavan, is nothing like its 1977 predecessor. Raghavan is respectful to the spirit of the movie with which his globe-trotting spy adventure shares a title. His Agent Vinod has high production values, a healthy budget and Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor. Raghavan has, however, taken care to embed a few tributes to the original movie. Watch out for a Mahendra Sandhu reference and a strategically placed tattoo.<\/p>\n

Nandini Ramnath is the film critic of Time Out Mumbai (www.timeoutmumbai.net).