This article was first published in the print edition of Manushi Journal. (Issue-13, Nov-Dec 1982)
This is yet another film in the tradition of Sholay, the film which inaugurated a new era of violence in Hindi cinema. Sholay marked a visible turn in the value system and social morality that Bombay films are now propagating with a fearful vigour. Just as in our political life we can no longer distinguish ministers from goondas, so in Hindi films the hero and villain are no longer distinguishable. This could have meant a more realistic depiction of human nature as a blend of good and bad, but since the Bombay film industry has no interest in real life or ordinary people, their version of the blend has produced a new monster—the Amitabh Bachan type of hero who stands above law and morality, beyond good and evil, who is a law unto himself
His capacity for violence far surpasses that of the villain, his yearning for blood and revenge are far more frightening than that of a maniac, his ruthless determination and lack of respect for human life close to that of the kind of men who devised and manned concentration camps and gas chambers, his cynicism raised into a heroic cult by tit for tat dialogue of the Salim-Javed variety…