Another one bites the dust !!

Long back when good old Doordarshan was airing english movies late night, I remember waiting for a movie which starred Sly Stallone. Even though I could not understand the dialogues, the fact that Sly was starring was enough for me to sit late in to night, expecting non stop action (was a big fan of Rambo you see). But this movie was different. 30 minutes in to the movie and there were no explosions still and the only action I saw was Stallone's character slapping another character. All they did was tal, talk and more talk.I switched off the TV and went to bed disapponted.

Later, after many years, there came a time when I could understand English movies, I chanced upon the same movie again playing on Star Movies. I was hooked on to it. It turned out to be a great movie with a funny script, razor sharp dialogues and good old slapstick situations. The performances too were top notch. The movie was Oscar.

It was based on a 1969 french movie of the same name. It tells the story of a gangster trying to go legitimate and the situations he has to face in doing so. All the action takes place in the span of a single day. Though the movie was not a commercial success, still remains my favourite Stallone movie and one of the best comedies.

Since then I have been trying to locate the DVD of the movie and was unable as none of the stores in Bangalore had it. Even the online stores did not have the DVD. So when I landed in London, one of my first job was to buy the DVD from Amazon.

Looks like our directors in bollywood too were unaware of this gem till now. Its script is tailor made for someone to copy in to a Hindi movie. But that's gonna change now. Apparently director Ashim Samanta and producer Shakti Samanta have procured the DVD and Oscar is all set to become Don Muthuswami in Hindi.

Heading the cast is none other than the God of acting Mithun prabhuji. Now it remains to be seen how it turns out to be. But considering the the eventual quality and fate of all those 'inspired' movies which the directors churn out after watching the original DVDs, I have little hope.

But being the eternal optimistic that I am , wish that parbhuji's chamatkar will make this as good as the original because the original is too good a film to be bastardised in to a bad movie. After all Oscar made me look for more (read dialogues, script) than just action in English movies.



Note: Image courtesy wikipedia and IndiaFM