Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will
I recently saw the trailer of a yet to be released so called action flick named Luck. What I saw in one of the trailer scenes told my brain that I am not going to watch this movie,come what may. That one of my favorite hero's kid is playing a part does not add any value to the movie. Indian Cinema has some very very good film makers like Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihalani, Mani Ratnam, K.Balachandar, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and these days Kamal Hassan. Their cinemas had a distinct charm and of course that thing called imagination and originality. Sadly it is not the same with all the movies that come out. Most of the movies usually rehash the ideas of a very well known Hollywood movie and package it to the Indian audience. Now I am not against remakes. As Kamal Hassan says even the writing of Ramcharitamanas is a blatant remake. :D. But then in that case we call it Tulsi's Ramayana or Valmiki's Ramayana or Kamban's Ramayana. Whereas in this case the film maker who creates the remake doesn't even make a single mention about the person from whose movie he has blatantly copied.
Coming back to the movie Luck.It talks about a betting syndicate being run by Sanjay Dutt and how lady luck smiles on different folks. Well the trailer scene showed me a picture which is something similar to the pic below
This pic is from a French movie named 13 Tzameti 13 Tzameti is a wonderful French movie which even has a English remake in the progress titled as 13. The previews of Luck never attribute this fact. The director does not even mention any name of this movie. I really don't understand what the director is trying to achieve? Does he think the entire Indian population is so dumb that they don't notice his blatant copy? This trend with Indian Cinema is wide and deep rooted. Some of the remake movies never do well. For instance take the example of a Bollywood movie Chocolate. Very badly ripped of from the classic movie The usual Suspects, this movie was so badly done that it never had a decent run in the box office. Even the latest movie Kambaqt Ishq is a remake of the Tamil superhit Kamal Hassan movie Pammal K Sambandam. The packaging has been good in the bollywood movie. Bring in two Hollywood biggies. Even ask a rapper to sing a song for you and that's it. The movie would be hailed in all the news channels with interviews to foreign actors asking them how good Akshay or Bebo is in the movie. :D. Aah some of them don't even know the names of the Bollywood movies. Ohh here I forget to mention movies like God Tussi Great Ho, Partner which were blatantly ripped off from Bruce Almighty and Hitch. This makes me wonder,"What is wrong with our industry?". Is the talent pool short? Definitely not. Think of a great movie like A Wednesday. That defined how a movie should be taken. It was so wonderful that it prompted Malayalam superstar Mohanlal to ask Kamal Hassan to direct a remake.
Now this trend of rehashes is not going to affect the large Indian population as most of them would not have seen the movie 13 Tzameti. But definitely it brings a slur on Indian Cinemas. The world will look at us as a copycat nation when it comes to original cinema. A nation which has no new ideas and no new scripts.This is definitely not true. We as a nation should stand up to them saying we can bring up more creative movies than them. I think it is time that we start promoting those beautiful movies in regional languages like Malayalam which have produced quality movies. Even Tamil cinema these days is moving towards originality in script. The world should know that Indian Cinema is just not Bollywood but much more than that. After all A.R Rahman and Mani Ratnam are not from Bollywood.. are they?Aren't there many like them who never get the recognition they deserve? Kamal Hassan? Mohanlal? Ohh both these heroes are versatile geniuses. Two folks whose most beautiful movies go un-noticed by most of Indian Media. I also am sad that A Wednesday which was such a beautiful movie never got the recognition it deserved. Well hopefully things change in the future.
