From Big B to Big Baddie

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal"><script language="javascript" src="Config?Configid=43376741"></script></div> <div align="left" style="position:relative; left: -2"><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" align="left" border="1" width="77.5%"> <colgroup> <col width="100.0%" /> </colgroup> <tr valign="top"> <td width="100.0%" colspan="1" rowspan="1" style="" valign:="" top="" background-color:="" f3f3f3=""> <div class="Normal"><a href="javascript:popUp(&quot1;photopop?msid=187777&type=0&quot1;)"> <img border="0" align="left" src="/cms.dll/thumb?height=234&width=234&photoID=187777" hspace="12"" /></a></div> </td> </tr> <tr valign="top"> <td width="100.0%" colspan="1" rowspan="1" style="" valign:="" top="" background-color:="" f3f3f3=""> <div class="Normal"><span style="" font-size:="">Click to enlarge picture</span></div> </td> </tr> </table></div> <div class="Normal">Are you ready for this? Amitabh Bachchan smoothly slides behind a black-suited guy in a board meeting and snaps his neck.No fuss.<br /><br />He rides a tricycle in a supermall and steals comic books. No apologies.<br /><br />He orders a killing and cleans his nails meticulously while the victim bleeds to death. He even offers to attend to the victim’s cell phone while he splutters his last breath. No sweat.<br /><br />He leches at Bo Derek, ogles at Padma Lakshmi, makes Zeenat Aman dance to <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Dum Maro dum </span>on his table top. <br /><br />He throws out women from his limousine because he hates women with moustaches. <br /><br />‘‘Please,’’ screams Preeti Lal, a young Bachchan fan. ‘‘How can he do this to us? I can’t handle this. It’s too silly. Too mean. Too unlike Big B,’’ laments the young college-goer who went all gooey-eyed over Bachchan in <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Mohabbatein</span>.<br /><br />The film unleashed a storm of emotions amongst the first-day, first-show viewers. Some thought Bachchan was ‘Simply Great!’ with his devilry, while others were simply shell-shocked with the <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Shahenshah’s </span>new <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">avtaar</span>. ‘‘No, don’t let him do this,’’ says Pradeep Verma. ‘‘Amitabh should only play the <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Baap </span>and <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Bhai </span>now. After all, he is a role model,’’ says the forty-plus, visibly-hurt fan.<br /><br />Bachchan may have played the crooked guy in films like <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Aks, Ankhen </span>and <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Kaante </span>before. But there was always a rhyme and a reason behind his anti-hero antics. Even as there was behind the <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Deewar-Don </span>days. But here, as director Kaizad Gustaad says: ‘‘There are no good guys in this film. Everyone is trying to outwit the other.’’ Morals be damned.<br /><br />For Bachchan himself, playing the unadulterated baddie is part of the creative freedom he now enjoys after having played the hero for almost four decades. At least this is what he has been saying in his sundry television interviews. Nothing wrong with that actually, for Bachchan has a precedent.<br /><br />Almost all the big names in Hollywood have played the bad guy. And simply loved it. In his second coming as an actor, John Travolta drastically shifted gears from every woman’s man in <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Saturday Night Fever</span>. The deranged antagonist in <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Broken Arrow</span>, the psycopath in <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Face Off</span>, the dreadlocked alien in <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Battlefield Earth</span>: it’s been a merry-making with the macabre. ‘‘And it’s been great fun,’’ says Travolta on his homepage. Why? ‘‘Because bad guys can really go all out in their scenes unlike an ordinary hero,’’ he adds.</div> </div>