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Down Memory Lane
Top Bollywood Bollywood
Stars Stars Who Who Played Played
'Reel Life'
Mumbai Mumbai Cops Cops
Bollywood and Mumbai Police have an enduring, and sometimes, even endearing relationship; though
it is difficult to say, who draws glamour from whom. Noted film journalist and author Uday Tarra Nayar
has had a ring side view of Bollywood for decades. In the following article, she captures Bollywood's
fascination for crime-based scripts, in which the top cops' roles have always been played by iconic stars
from Dilip Kumar to Amitabh Bachchan to Akshay Kumar and a variety of others. But surprisingly, it's
the suave and lean faced old timer, late Iftekhar Khan, who comes to mind when you think of Mumbai
Police Commissioner, because he played the top cop's role more times than most others.
In the majority of Bollywood movies Maharashtra Control of Organised those criminals who had the backing
centering on crime and punishment, Crime Act was implemented and of people in positions of power, was
the character of the police chief is nearly 200 gangsters and criminals brilliant. They felt he behaved exactly
either obnoxiously negative or were shot dead. the way Mr. Sivanandhan behaved in
unrealistically positive. There are
only a handful of films in which the
police chief is portrayed as a police
chief should be portrayed and as he
is in real life. Ram Gopal Varma's
Company is rated as a good example
of realistic characterization and
Mohanlal, the Malayalam cinema
superstar, was roped in by Varma to
play the character, thereby cracking a
casting coup. Those who knew Mr. D.
Sivanandhan well and watched the
film, Company, out of sheer curiosity
such circumstances and he was able
to present a convincing picture of a
strong, upright and reasonable
police officer without the high-pitch
drama usually resorted to by actors
while enacting such characters.
portrayal of a Mumbai police chief felt that the fictitious police chief bore “I was not asked by the director to
largely because Varma is said to have very little physical resemblance to Mr. b e h a v e o r s p e a k l i k e M r.
based the look of the character on Sivanandhan but they were happy to Sivanandhan,” said Mohanlal in a
Mr. D. Sivanandhan, the new police admit that Mohanlal in the critical conversation with me after the film's
commissioner of Mumbai who was and more dramatic junctures of the release when he was recognized for
the Crime Branch head in Mumbai in story when the police chief is called his performance at every award
the late 1990s when the stringent upon to take drastic measures to fight function that year. “I have observed a
THE PROTECTOR
Sept-Oct 2009 30