MetroMaaZa 13

Karan Arjun (known as Karan and Arjun in English) (Hindi: करन अरजुन Urdu: کرن اَرجُن) is a 1995 Bollywood film starring- Salman Khan, Shahrukh Khan, Kajol, Mamta Kulkarni, Raakhee, Amrish Puri, Johnny Lever and Ranjeet. The film was directed by Rakesh Roshan, and written by Ravi Kapoor and Sachin Bhowmick. Karan Arjun is a mix of an upbeat Bollywood musical, religious overtones and an action movie.

This 1995 drama has a little of everything, thoroughly mixed together. The familiar leading man Shakrukh Kahn is paired with Salman Khan as a pair of brothers done in early in the film by the ever deliciously evil Amrish Puri, to keep them from their unsuspected inheritance. Their devastated mother, played by the long-suffering and then fiercely vindictive Rakhee, prays to the goddess Kali for the return of her sons. Temple bells sway, the camera gives a closeup of a the goddess figure, and reincarnation is underway.

The plot is a garish comic book, of course, in which the bad guys strut, bluster, and can’t shoot straight even with the latest smuggled machine guns. Shakrukh Khan in his new avatar as a raffish stableboy is a crack shot with a sling shot; Salman Khan is a muscled bare knuckle fighter. They are briefly pitched against one another when Shakrukh breaks into the gangster wedding where his beloved (Kajol, as cute as always but more mannerisms than acting here) is about to be pledged to the bad guy’s affected son (just back from London with brilliantined hair & moustache and the catchphrase in English, “It’s a joke!”). Salman Khan, his unrecognized reincarnated brother, is a hired heavy for the gangsters. . . after they have trashed the bar, each other and many of the tables, throwing one another around, cue the lightning flash and dizzying flashbacks to stop the fight. Shakrukh flees, Salman is arrested, and Kajol is still helpless in the grip of the bad guys.

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The Khans did much better, slicker pictures later in their careers. This one is amusing for posturing that recalls Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns but never bothers to keep consistency of tone. Salman with his handsome and often sullen look is more convincing than Shakruh, who is alternately too boyish and too grief stricken.

But the best of show is the classic bad guy, Amrish Puri, bullet headed, pop eyed and fierce, a villain epic enough to make you believe that he would assassinate his associates but then howl like an animal in the dust when vengeance touches his own family.

Music and dance is familiar Bollywood; my favorite number was that one done in Kali’s temple, silhouetted in the dark as the boys appear and then disappear before a baffled Amrish Puri.

A trifle, but a lot of fun!