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Down Memory Lane
couple of friends I have who are in in Khakee uniforms in the 'Seventies an IPS officer in Sarfarosh. He looked
top positions in the police force and I could rival him. Raj Kumar Santoshi's smart in plain clothes and behaved
have noted that they appear ever so Khakee, I am told, was specially like a proper Crime Branch officer in
calm and unruffled while discharging written for the sixty plus actor, some situations.
their duties in the most testing
circumstances. It is only in films that
police officers are made to appear
larger than life,” Mohanlal
elaborated.
Some of the more larger than life
characterizations of IPS officers have
been enacted by Amitabh Bachchan.
In fact, if one were to take a count,
Amitabh Bachchan comes a close
second to Iftekhar who played the
police officer in every film released in
the Sixties and Seventies.
My personal favourite has always
been Amitabh Bachchan right from
Zanjeer, which shot him to stardom,
to Khaki released a few years ago.
The intensity in his eyes, the power in
his voice, the squaring of his
shoulders, the blows he dealt to the
criminals, the firmness with which he
keeping in mind his switch over to
character roles. In Khakee he played
a senior police official on the verge of
retirement. After a long tenure as an
upright, unyielding and patriotic
officer he takes up one last challenge
in the hope of getting an honourable
retirement. The character was
luminously written and built up so
sensitively by Santoshi that the aging
actor took centre stage in the
unfolding of the drama and left an
indelible impact on viewers.
Ramesh Sippy's Shakti was yet
another film in which the Police
Commissioner's character was
drawn somewhat realistically. As is
his wont, Dilip Kumar worked
painstakingly on the delicate
nuances of the character and made it
memorable.
Ajay Devgan has played the police
officer in a couple of films or more.
Nothing to write home about. In
Masti he played a comic policeman
and the masses loved him. For that
matter Nana Patekar, too, played a
funny police inspector in Bhooth and
viewers liked the caricature
immensely. Such characters make
one wonder whether there are such
funny guys in the police force.
The actresses who have played
strong police officers on screen are
Vijay Shanti, Rekha and Juhi Chawla
in my memory. Vijay Shanti's
performance in Tejaswini got her
wide acclaim despite its
exaggerations and larger than life
strengths. Once, when I met Meeran
Borwanker for an interview at her
office in Mumbai, I asked her what
delivered the crisp lines were never Among the younger actors it was she thought of the way women police
easy to match and none of his Aamir Khan who surprised keen officers were portrayed in Hindi
contemporaries who played the men viewers with a convincing portrayal of cinema and she just laughed away
THE PROTECTOR
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