In 1993, Bollywood superstar Sanjay Dutt was charged with possessing a weapon used in a terrorist atrocity. The case is the longest in India’s history… and it’s still going.
Dutt is no less prolific for it – he’s been on bail for the best part of 14 years but still managed to make 54 films between 1996 and 2006. Unfortunately, Shootout At Lokhandwala was the production fated to coincide with Dutt’s sentencing.
Ironically, Dutt is a perfect fit for the role of gun-toting supercop A.A. Khan, a real-life hero whose team took out a notorious crime gang during a siege in a Bombay suburb.
But while Khan and others involved in the incident tell it like it really was, producer Sanjay Gupta (the Indian Joel Silver) and director Apoorva Lakhia are more interested in printing the legend, the film’s tagline being “Based on true rumours.”
Liz Mermin gets her camera into all sorts of interesting places, cheerfully capturing the trials and low-tech tribulations of a major production hampered by the Damacles’ sword of its star's court hearing.
Indeed, Dutt probably has less screen time than his body double. As filming comes to a standstill for the umpteenth time, it appears that Dutt is playing the prima donna. Gradually, though, we begin to sympathise with the clearly pre-occupied star.
He understandably gives little away in interview, unlike the rest of the cast and crew who, from the Hindi answer to Pamela Anderson to the production’s indomitable manager/coordinator/den mother, are only too happy to expand on their roles.
Vivek Oberoi, while carefully cultivating his pretty-boy image, earns respect for channelling his energies into every aspect of the production, not just his part as the movie’s villain.
But the star of Mermin’s film is Lakhia. Laid-back and cynical (catchphrase: “Cut – mind-blowing!”), he’s a natural - at least on one side of the camera. In the face of so much adversity, you have to admire his job-done, quantity-over-quality approach.
He does occasionally lose his cool (duff explosions simply won’t do), however, and one hopes that he treats dogs better than stuntmen. One poor soul is literally slapped in the face with a wet fish. So much for the glamour of the movies.
The rollercoaster ends with a glitzy premiere and the reaction an adoring public, which all goes to prove that wherever you are in the world, nobody cares what the critics think.
And Dutt? He was sentenced to six years in prison and a hefty fine shortly after the film’s release. But he’s out on bail. Again.
Elliott Noble
