"To gain something, you have to give up something to the path of fire."
Hello everyone!
Not that I blame anyone.
I mean just LOOK at the man!
Ahem.
Tonight's movie of choice is one I'd had on my list to watch for a very long time, but somehow never really sat down to it until I had a few days off at the start of autumn here and could muster both time AND energy to sit this through.
These ole Bollywood movies ... three hours! My body just can't anymore lol.
Without further ado, we're going to walk right down the path of fire with the goat, Roshan, in Agneepath.
During the tail end of the seventies, on a secluded island Mandwa, close to Mumbai (across the channel from it, actually), a young boy, Vijay, is living his best life, even if his family isn't all that rich. But his father, simply called the Professor, is well respected, a teacher at the local school, and because people love him so much, the village chief wants to get rid of him.
Classic, really.
He calls upon his villainous son, Kancha, who comes to Mandwa, takes a look around, and decides this could be a really good starting point for his nascent drug trade, so he cooks up an idea to sell to the villagers about expanding salt production, but really it's one of those schemes that only sound good on paper, then once you implement them you're like OH SHIT.
Vijay's dad, smelling a rat, tries to warn the villagers, but because he's in Kancha's way, the dude has his henchmen rape and murder a school girl, and pins it on Vijay's dad. The village, because everyone is an idiot apparently, believes this shit, and Vijay's dad hangs from a tree, curtesy of Kancha himself.
Vijay and his pregnant mother leave, finding refuge in Mumbai, where she gives birth to a daughter, Shiksha, and where Vijay finds companionship in a local girl, Kaali.
Then, at the tender age of 12, he shoots a police officer instead of testifying against the local drug kingpin, Rauf Lala, which prompts his mother to leave him, taking the baby with her, and Vijay to turn to Lala for support because he has his own motives.
As in, he'll be avenging his father, k, thanks. Eventually.
Years go by, and it turns out - as we learn from the police commissioner - that Vijay has been playing his game very, very carefully. He's become Lala's right-hand man, as close to him as his own two sons, but he feeds choice information to the police, and then from the police back to Lala, constantly dancing right down the line of everything without getting caught.
It's at this time, fifteen years after his dad's death, that Kancha resurfaces, trying to gain a foothold in Mumbai, but Vijay intercepts his attempt and deviously turns the tables in Lala's favour, for which he receives the area he's lived and grown up in over the years as his personal dominion. He also orchestrates an assassination attempt on Lala and his son, which he prevents by taking a bullet meant for one, thus further ingratiating himself (the commissioner has his doubts, but, he's an old fox and he knows a thing or two).
Doing his best to keep pulling the strings, and seeing an opportunity to finally get to Kancha, Vijay kills Lala's son and heir on the eve of his wedding, or well, has him killed, before then killing the assassin. Then, as Lala goes into a state of shock and lands in the hospital, and his other son being a bit of an imbecile, Vijay takes over, and goes to Mumbai to negotiate with Kancha personally.
He doesn't mince words - and doesn't really bother with Katrina Kaif's musical number that I really don't get the point of, because who in their right mind ENJOYS watching sweaty men shimmying their chests and pumping their hips?! - telling Kancha he wants Mandwa in exchange for giving him Mumbai.
Kancha, being theatrically villainous, might like Vijay for how he took over Lala's empire (getting rid of a lot of the underworld dealings the man had going, most importantly human trafficking), but he's doubting a lot of things, so he tells Vijay the deal will only go through if he takes out the police commissioner.
I'm not entirely sure how Vijay would have handled that one if not for a little dramatic situation that crops up: Lala wakes, gets out of hospital, learns Vijay is on the mainland and has betrayed him, so he finds teenage Shiksha and offers to sell her to the highest bidder.
Hearing this, Vijay finally engages with Lala by using the most undercover warriors in history, men dressed as women battling their way in, and kills Lala in the process.
This is when his mother finally admits to Shiksha he's her older brother, as the girl has only ever known him as a delivery man who sometimes brings her presents on her birthday (his presents, mind you ...). Now though, they get some time to spend together, and she sees all that he's built basically in her name (organizing emergency ambulances literally carrying her name, for starters). No matter what he's done, however, his mother will never forgive him for this path he's walking, which he breaks down over in Kaali's arms afterwards.
Kaali herself is an angel, standing by his side no matter what, through thick and thin. And because he knows, with Lala gone, that his confrontation with Kancha is coming, particularly after taking out his lieutenant during the Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations to protect the commissioner, he finds the steadiness to confess his love for the girl, and they get married.
Then Kancha ruins everything by hiring assassins, shooting the place up, killing Kaali in the crossfire.
More than ever determined to avenge his loved ones, Vijay returns to Mandwa, setting off explosions that decimate the island (which Kancha has been running like a prison camp, mind), and getting into it with Kancha, who finally knows just who he's up against.
Things are looking bleak because Kancha is a powerhouse and wounds Vijay badly, dragging him to the same tree where his father was hung, but with his very last fragments of strength, Vijay turns the tables, defeating Kancha, and in an act of poetic justice, hangs him from the same tree Kancha hung his father.
His revenge complete, the man finally drops like dead weight, and dies in the arms of his mother and sister, having fulfilled his life's mission and quest. As the final scene unfolds, he is now free to join his father in the afterlife, as the young, innocent boy he was before everything happened.
FIN
Man, this is a HEAVY movie to watch. And honestly, Roshan deserves every single award he won for this, because he's superb.
I do dare you to take a shot each time one of his movies opens with a scene of his green eyes, though, because I noticed that seems to be a trend, haha! But overall, he does spectacularly well as Vijay, showing the complex sides of this boy who was forced to grow up much too soon. Priyanka Chopra is amazing as Kaali, and I'm so mad their love song was cut from the general movie release, because it's beautiful.
Of course we instead get Roshan looking like the devil himself while he's taking care of Kancha's lieutenant though, covered in red dye and the whites of his eyes literally glowing.
The movie is well worth sitting through a full three hours for, and more. It shows just how corruption can dig its roots deep, and how it can sometimes be practically exterminated in one fell swoop.
Agneepath is a story of revenge, but it's also the story of a boy loving his family so fiercely that nothing else matters. I'll definitely be watching it again at some point!
xx
*images and video not mine
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