Hindi
Himmatwala : No guts or glory
MUMBAI: Sajid Khan prefers to make entertainers but this time he decided to take a tried-and-tested formula and stick to it by remaking Himmatwala from 1983, which in turn was a remake of a Telugu hit, Ooriki Monagadu (1981). As was the case with the earlier version, this film too has a village backdrop. And instead of a contemporary setting which is how the main, multiplex and overseas audience likes it now, he has opted to keep it a 1983 story. However, by treating it like a spoof, the attempt to revisit the original is hurried and patchy and leaves it in a mess.
Ajay Devgn has returned to Rampur to avenge his father‘s death caused by the village sarpanch, Mahesh Manjrekar, aided by his brother-in-law, Paresh Rawal. Manjrekar is a tyrant who has usurped the land and property of each and every villager and treats them like his slaves. Nobody dare oppose him. Years back he had framed Devgn‘s father, the local priest, and shamed him in front of people to the extent that he committed suicide. A young Devgn‘s attempt to kill him fails. The goons chase him and set fire to his house but he runs away after his mother, Zarina Wahab and sister goad him to.
Devgn grows up in an orphanage in a big city and is informed that contrary to what he believed, his mother and sister are very much alive but in a bad shape. He decides to return to look after them as well as to avenge his father‘s death. Being a Devgn film, the original social musical is turned into an action movie. His skills are already established as a street fighter who brawls for money.
Devgn, on his arrival to the village, starts the clean up first tackling Rawal and then, immediately, neutralising Manjrekar. What is the purpose of carrying on your film once your main villain is humiliated and defeated? None, really, and that is what happens with rest of the film. The villainy is now reduced to comic villains‘ scheming and plotting to little effect.
If Manjrekar is a tyrant, his daughter, Tamannaah, is more so. When Devgn crosses her path, she sends goons after him. Of course, they are no match for this super-powerful man. Next, she lets loose a tiger on him. Things go wrong, and instead of her enemy, she is about to become the tiger‘s prey. Devgn stands between her and the tiger and saves her. Love happens. Songs and dance follow. When you are borrowing a film, you might as well dig a bit more and also take songs from the original. So we have two songs from the earlier Himmatwala. Thanks to Bappi Lahiri‘s racy score, these remain the only good tunes in the film.
Since the villains are already neutralised, the fights are outsourced to a bunch of toughies. Street fighters are brought in to make the climax action-packed but when Devgn can‘t win against this well-armed bunch, who will save the family? It is time to invoke superpower, the Goddess Durga. The tiger, which Devgn had fought and later befriended, returns to chase the villains away. RIP Manmohan Desai.
Himmatwala is badly scripted and the director does not seem to be serious about this film. As one of the dialogues in the films suggests, it is 1983 story so anything goes! That also seems to be director Sajid Khan‘s approach to the film. The climax is stretched. There is nothing much for actors to do. Devgn is happy being Himmatwala with action scenes. Tamannaah is okay. Manjrekar hams it up. Wahab is sincere. Whatever little entertainment the film offers is thanks to Rawal.
Himmatwala will find it tough to sustain after the weekend as despite a holiday today, the opening is below par.
Hindi
Remembering Gyan Sahay, the lens behind film, television and advertising
From a puppet rabbit selling poppadums to Hindi cinema, he framed it all.
MUMBAI: There are careers, and then there are canvases. Gyan Sahay, the veteran cinematographer, director, and producer who passed away on 10 March 2026 in Mumbai, had one of the latter. Over several decades in the Indian film and television industry, he turned lenses, lights, and the occasional puppet rabbit into something approaching art.
A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Sahay built his reputation as a director of photography across a career that stretched from the early 1970s all the way to the digital age. He was the kind of craftsman who understood that a well-composed shot is not merely a technical achievement but a quiet act of storytelling.
For most Indians of a certain age, however, Sahay will forever be the man behind the rabbit. His direction of the iconic long-running television commercial for Lijjat Papad, featuring its now-legendary puppet bunny, gave the country one of its most cheerfully persistent advertising images. It was the sort of work that sneaks into the national subconscious and takes up permanent residence.
His big-screen credits as cinematographer include Anokhi Pehchan (1972), Pagli (1974), Pas de Deux (1981), and Hum Farishte Nahin (1988). In 1999, he stepped behind a different kind of camera altogether, making his directorial debut with Sar Ankhon Par, a drama that featured Vikas Bhalla and Shruti Ulfat, with a cameo by Shah Rukh Khan for good measure.
On television, Sahay was particularly prized for his command of multi-camera production setups, a skill that made him a go-to technician for large-scale shows and reality programmes. In an industry that has never been especially patient with complexity, he was the calm hand on the rig.
In later life, Sahay turned teacher. He participated regularly in masterclasses and Digi-Talks, often hosted by organisations such as Bharatiya Chitra Sadhna, sharing hard-won wisdom on cinematography, the comedy of timing in a shot, and the sweeping changes brought by the shift from celluloid to digital. He was also said to have been involved in a project concerning a biographical film on Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy.
Tributes from the film industry poured in following the news of his passing, with colleagues remembering him as a senior cameraman who served as a rare bridge between two entirely different eras of Indian cinema. That is, perhaps, the finest thing one can say of any craftsman: he kept up, and he brought others along with him.
