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Caution: Don’t expect too much stylish English.

RAJKUMAR SANTOSHI-”SAABASH MERE CHITEY!”

When did the last time you get the effect of drinking Glucon D? Your blood got hot? Released lots of Adrenalin in your body?….. Perhaps after watching A RAJKUMAR SANTOSHI MOVIE.

There is lots of energy and dhaka dhak high speed involved in his films that you can not close your eyes for a second or could not get chance of escaping for popcorn or toilet.

Rajkumar Santoshi is a director who does not care about his films’ box office results. He follows his heart and makes convincing message oriented and entertaining films in typical Bollywood format and so is one of the my favorite directors after Hrishida and Gulzarsaab and shares same slot with Mukul S. Anand, Vijay Anand etc.

As per my knowledge, he is son of veteraln film maker P. L. Santoshi and before Ghayal he was assistant to Govind Nihalani in Ardhsatya and Vijeta. Dharmendra gave him first break as a director. Here is brief analysis of his films.

Ghayal (1990)
Santoshi’s first film describing revenge drama with action. The first scene where a police van enters into the jail tells Santoshi’s visulalization and direction power. Santoshi succeeded to get best out of Sunny Deol. Here sunny deol’s shouting is tolerable. The first film itself gave proof of RKS’ mastery in story telling. Sunny Deol got rebirth as an actor. And it was Amrish Puri as Balwant Rai- the cold blooded villain (the dialogue”Balwant rai ke kutte”) who gave superb and unforgettable performance.

Damini(1993)
Damini was true tribute to woman’s inner strengths. Santoshi’s favourite Meenakshi Sheshadri was playing lead role of Damini which was her best performacnce in entire career. Rishi Kapoor’s highly under rated performance. But Sunny Deol was impressive in the role of an advocate “Govind” ( he got national award for the role). Amrish Puri also as an Advocate called “chadhdha” was unforgettable. All the characters were balanced. Remember Sunny deol’s introductory scene or scene between Damini and servant Urmi at hospital when some media persons are asking questions to Urmi or the famous scene with “dhai kilo ka haath” or Rishi kapoor’s final emotional statement in the court in the climax or sunny deol’s lecture on “taarikh”- all scenes are highly dramatized but excellently written and performed.
Perhaps Damini is one of the best woman oriented films of Hindi cinema.

Both Ghayal and Damini established Santoshi as good story teller with all the masalas of typical hindi cinema and got the reputation that he could handle dramatized stories very well. But his next film was meant to crack this impression.

Andaz Apna Apna (1994)
This movie shows Santoshi’s range of handling different subjects. After giving two highly dramatic successful films he tries opposite and most difficult genre of films- Comedy. And he was quite successful in that effort.
Andaz Apna Apna is one of the best comedy movies of Hindi cinema. Santoshi has capability of getting best out of his actors. Here Aamir khan and Salman khan are good but average actresses like Raveena Tandon and Karishma Kapoor have flourished well. Other supporters like Shakti Kapoor (Crime master Gogo), Teja & Bajaj( Paresh Rawal), Robert(Viju Khote) and Bhalla ( Shehzad Khan) made movie more watchable and unforgettable.

The initial scene with Juhi Chawla and Govinda (“Aaila”) or Salman Khan laughing outside restaurant where Aamir and Raveena are eating or climax (which is quite often seen in Priyadarshan’s Hungama, Herapheri, Hulchal, Maalamal weekly etc.) or the Aamir’s confusing football match with glasses or gadbad in salman’s stomach makes you not only laugh but outburst laugh.

In Hindustani culture people say that Nayi (Barber) and Darji (Tailer) can not be friends. And in this film Salman is tayler and Aamir is Barber by birth. I don’t know Santoshi and his writers have consciously described that matter. In one word “Shabaash mere chitey!”

Unfortunately, the film washed away in the storm of Hum Aapke Hain Kaun’s success in 1994. I liked the dialogue” Shabash mere chite”. When someone was doing well, we friends used to tell this dialogue in our engineering days.

Barsaat (1995)
Specially made for Bobby Deol. Not up to the level of Santoshi’s other films. An average film with melodious music. Best part was Danny in a negative role always drinking milk with honey.

Ghatak (1996)
Ghatak is Santoshi’s most underrated work. Best of Sunny-Santoshi’s combination.
Perhaps last release of R D Burman (“Nigahon ne chheda hai dil ka tarana”) After his death Anu Malik took the charge and gave hit item number “koi jaaye to le jaaye”.

Ghatak is treasure of all time classic scenes like
Sunny Deol’s crying at hospital
Amrish Puri’s advice to control anger to Sunny Deol
The shamshaan scene where Danny says ‘tere baap ko maine kutta banaya tha”
Scene where sunny beats Makrand Deshpande and his team
Scene between Sunny and KK raina outside Raina’s shop where sunny says “bujhdil ki koi zameen nahi hoti”.
the “kyon kyon kyon” scene with Tinu Anand.

Amrish puri’s one of the best performances. Sunny’s shouting is again tolerable here. Highly dramatized but believable film. This is possible in only Manomohan Desai or Santoshi’s film.

Chinagate (1998)
Can anybody think of making a main stream commercial film by investing more than 20 crores on character artists? Santoshi took risk and he was succeeded reasonably.
Chinagate was not a master piece, not at the level of Seven Samurai or Sholay, but was technically a good movie. I liked Mukesh Tiwari’s dialogues. Amrish Puri’s arrogant but funny nature, Naseer, Danny and Om puri’s serious characters and Santoshi’s cowboyish treatment made the film watchable. In addition, there was perfect background music.

Pukar (2000)
Love story with background of army. This film disappointed me when I saw it first time. But in second watching I found it a reasonably good movie.
Though Namrata shirodkar’s character was not impressive, A R Rehman’s music was below average, the film has some good performances by Anil Kapoor (National award winning), Madhuri Dixit and Danny. The best part was Anil kapoor’s introgation scenes.

Lajja(2001)
Perhaps this is the first indian film which showed most of the problems related with woman. Dowry (Mahima Chaudhary), Rape (Rekha), Woman’s social status (Rekha and Manisha koirala), use of woman as child producing machine(Manisha), woman’s consent for sexual relationship(Aarti Baldeve as prostitute), her sacrifice for relationships(Madhuri )etc.
How too many issues can be crafted in one convincing story- Lajja is good example.

In addition, Lajja shows RKS’ capability to handle different subjects with different treatments. Like Mahima chaudhary’s story with respect to dowry issue was told with light treatment (remember “Uthth jaa” dialogues and when anil kapoor says” jo sar jhuka ke chal rahe hai who ladki waale hai”) and in the same film Madhuri Dixit and Rekha’s stories were told with seriousness. Initially I had some doubts about Ajay Devgan’s capability to portray the character of a villager but it was santoshi’s confidence in him that Ajay lived the character of “Bhoolva.”

Legend of Bhagatsingh (2002)
For this film, Santoshi used eastman colour history look.
Best of all Bhagatsingh films released at that time. How a watchable, interesting historical film can be made- this is a good example.
When I was watching the film, I tried to find something that may be irrelevant to 1930s time, but I failed. Technically brilliant!
Perfect casting- Ajay Devgan as Bhagatsinh, Sushant singha Sukhdev, D. Santosh as Rajguru, Akhilendra Mishra as Chadrashekhar Azaar- irrespective of star power.

Remember the scene where Sukhdev (Shushant Singh) collapses near tree in jail. Kisi ke bhi aankh me aansoo aa sakte hai. Or innocence on face of Rajguru or last song “Mera rang de basanti”.
A R Rehman and Sameer’s first time but super combination. Let’s neglect authentication of history details, the film is must watch. I liked the climax where after fansi of all the three characters film iimmediately ends.

Khakee (2004)
Before this film I wondered why Bachchan and santoshi are not working together and create magic like AB+Mukul Anand combo (Agneepath, Hum, khuda gawah)? even AB also mentioned that he wanted to work with Santoshi.

In Khakee they came together and what a move Santoshi made? If Mukul Anand was there for Khakee, he must have made Khakee same as Santoshi have made.

Amitabh Bachchan was in full Vijay Dinanath Chauhan form with clean shave face. A powerful film with lots of twist and turns. Akshay’s comic talent, Ajay’s scary appearance in a negative role, even Tushar Kapoor was tolerable under Santoshi’s direction. Scene where Tanuja Slaps Amitabh and the feeling of guilt on the AB’s face and at the same time camera flashes on Amitabh’s face- The height of creativity from Santoshi + Amitabh combination. In the same film AB’s introduction scene where he was sleeping the in the funtion which was meant for him and his funny dialogues)maaf kijiye jaraa aankh lag gayi)- was quite hillarious. None of the directors of current times portrayed AB as angree old man as he was in Khakee.

In Khakee, Santoshi changed his style little bit. Khakee was visually more impressive than his previous films. All the shots were brilliantly taken. For Atul Tiwari’s past -grey tone was used. In an initial sequence where a policeman is shot by too many bullets and the bullets passes to shutter of shop through his body. Brilliant!. Bacckground music was also good.

Though Khakee had some drawbacks in script(irrelevant songs, some twists) it is Santoshi’s treatment that made me to believe the unrealistic things in the story. .

Family (2006)
Santoshi’s weakest film ever. Though there are sparks (AB’s cigar chewing scenes) of Rajkumar santoshi’s treatment but whole Santoshi was missing here. Story concept was good but on the whole film was missing Santoshi’s magical touch of his previous films. May be he was under producer’s pressure to highlight Aryamaan as hero. But blame RKS for bad music, loose screenplay, irrelevant songs picturisation and overall a below average movie. Though Background score was quite loud but i liked.

May be his films have minor loopholes in the scripts and some unbelievable moments but as a whole his all films are good entertainers. He never tried to get out of typical hindi cinema format but consistently tried to tell different stories irrespective of result of his films at box office.

After watching Santoshi movies nth times I have made some observation/ characteristics of a typical santoshi movies:

-Generally fast paced movies. Incidents happening one by one at bullet speed.
-Joshilay Dialogues (“Yeh dhai kilo ka haath hai”- Damini, “taarikh- Damini, behro ko sunane ke liye dhamaka zaroori hai- the legend of bhagat sinh, Diya wohi jhalega jisme dum hoga- khakee, etc etc.
- Powerful performances
- Story generally deals with a social problem
- The central character is fighting against system (Damini, Lajja, Ghayal, Ghatak)
- Small characters have enough importance ( Urmi and his grand father in Damini, Anu Kapoor in Ghayal, Tinu Anand in Lajja, K K Raina in Ghatak) irrespective of there length of role.
- Generally middle class characters and background
- Sunny Deol with shouting dialogues is tolerable only in Rajkumar Santoshi film. (not in craps Salaakhen, Ziddi or Indian or Jaal except Gadar)
- Actors might have chance to win National award (Sunny Deol, Anil Kapoor & Ajay Devgan)
- And an item song like chhama chhamma, aisa jaadoo daala re, aaiye aa jaaaiye etc etc(if you are lucky enough)
- As far as I know most of his films have original scripts may be inspired( China Gate) but not copied
- The first rule of cinema- Entertainment which every RKS movie follows very well and most of the times with a convincing message.

He is capable enough to do justice to the maginificent history if he would make “prithviraj chauhan” hope so.

If i am given chance to assist any director, RKS would be my first choice. RKS are u listening?

And now, I am eagerly waiting for Halla Bol and Ramayan- and am sure that if script is good he is capable of creating magic again like Ghayal, Ghatak, Damini and Andaz apna apna and want to say again “ Saabash mere chitey!”

P.S. RKS also acted in Santosh shivan’s “Hello”.