Super Star Rajesh Khanna

Super Star Rajesh Khanna

Friday, March 21, 2008

Rupaye Dus Karod - 1991

RUPAYE DUS KAROD


Introduction :

Rupaye Dus Karod is a 1991 Indian Bollywood suspense thriller film directed by Sikander Bharti and produced by Waman K. Dehsmukh and written by Shabdh Kumar. The film was made in the style of formula-based potboilers and was a hit. It stars Rajesh Khanna in the lead role and supporting cast includes Chunky Pandey, Amrita Singh, Sonu Walia, Avinash Wadhavan, Deepika Chikhalia, Sadashiv Amrapurkar, Kiran Kumar in pivotal roles.  Rupaye Dus Karod (ten crores of rupees) is the story of a detective novelist (writing in Hindi) - Ravi Varma (Rajesh Khanna) whose father had to flee from India in his childhood itself because of a conspiracy masterminded by his wicked business partners and later Ravi finds himself in mystery murder and another plot to have tried to earn 10 crore by fraudulent means.


Star Cast :
  •     Super Star Rajesh Khanna...Lawyer and Novelist Ravi Verma
  •     Chunky Pandey as Suraj
  •     Amrita Singh as Aarthi Saxena
  •     Sonu Walia as Poonam
  •     Sadashiv Amrapurkar as Vakil Jamuna Das
  •     Avinash Wadhavan as Vicky
  •     Kiran Kumar as Babubhai
Other Film Crew's :
  • Directed by     Sikander Bharti
  • Produced by     Waman K. Dehsmukh
  • Music by     Bappi Lahiri
  • Release date :  November 29, 1991
  •  Language :    Hindi
  • Country :     India

Summary :

Chamanlal, Aatmaram were partners with Jamuna Das and Babubhai but Atmaram discovers that the core business is selling women abroad for prostitution, he breaks away from this partnership and tells the wife of Chamanlal. Chamanlal's wife confronts him but Chamanlal is steadfast and decides not to leave the business. In an extreme reaction his wife leaves the house along-with her son and clothes to start a living on her own. Chamanlal keeps thinking about this matter and decides to meet his other two partners to convey he feels this business is unethical and that he cares for his family's sentiments more and asks for his final share before parting ways. But because of a conspiracy masterminded by his wicked business partners (Kiran Kumar and Sadashiv Amrapurkar), Chamanlal presumes he killed Babubhai(Kiran Kumar) and the prime witness to this supposedly murder - Vakil Jamuna Das(Sadashiv Amarpurkar), asks Chamanlal to flee but at the same time informs the police to search for him. Chamanlal searches for his wife and son but cannot locate them and so informs Atmaram that now he has reformed and that he needs to search for his son and wife who have left him.He also tells Atmaram that he is innocent and wants to escape. Meanwhile after reading in newspapers about police searching for Chamanlal and that Chamanalal has died in an accident, his wife considers herself a widower and brings up her only child by tailoring.



20 years later, through a source Vakil Jamuna Das comes to know that Chamanlal is alive and has made it big in Singapore and has made investments abroad and plans to transfer them to his wife and son, after searching for them extensively in India. Chamanlal decides to transfer 10 crores to RBI in such an arrangement that only his own family members will get an access to the fund. Brought up by his mother, Ravi (Rajesh Khanna) obtains a law degree and becomes a very successful famous criminal lawyer. But after few years stops and instead writes Hindi novels of crime detection genre. His novels to achieve popularity within few years.

Aarthi Saxena has huge crush on Ravi Varma all because of being fan of his suspense novels. Aarthi is naive and keeps thinking that all crime cases can be solved in the manner in which Ravi Verma's novels move forward. Ravi Verma’s face was never disclosed to the public in last few years since his novels hit the stores. A media conference is arranged in which his face would be disclosed and function is arranged where chief guest is DIG Sharma(Satyendra Kapoor) . In fact at this function she meets Ravi for the very first time with a toy gun in her hands and shocks the people gathered around Ravi Verma, saying she would kill him if she does not do what she wants. Then later discloses that she did this only to get an autograph from him. Media and public are shocked to know that famous Lawyer Ravi Verma is the one who writes suspense novels as well. Later Aarthi becomes friends with Ravi and tooks him to their home and introduces him to her father Aatmaram and her brother Vicky (Avinash Wadhavan). There Ravi comes to know that Vcky and his father do not get along well as they keep fighting over Vicky’s money spending habits.

Chamanlal's ex-business partners interested in usurping this huge sum of 10 crores. They are well-aware of the talent of Ravi Varma and therefore, they hire his services to draw a scheme so that this money could be usurped by them. For compelling him to do this job for them, they kidnap his mother and threaten to kill her, not knowing that both Ravi and his mother are related to Chamanlal. Ravi agrees to work for them but at the same time devises a scheme such that he saves his mother, ensures that the money does not get into the hands of the unscrupulous people. First he decides to appoint a trusted friend, who is looking for a job, as his secretary(Deepika Chikhalia).

Ravi’s first target is following the life of son of Babubhai – Suraj (Chinky Pandey) - who keeps on chasing skirts and fooling girls saying he loves them. Suraj keeps a bet with his friends (Paintal and others) that he will make Poonam(Sonu Walia), a club dancer, fall in love with them. He makes Poonam trust her and acts as if he is in love with her. Ravi asks Babubhai, as a part of his plan, to not give pocket expenses to his son Suraj. Later Ravi ensures Suraj becomes aware of a plan where Suraj can earn 10 crores if Suraj works for client of Ravi named Queen of Hastinapur (Deepika Chikalia). Suraj jumps on this offer and agrees to go as per plan made by Ravi. Meanwhile Ravi asks his secretary(Deepika Chikalia) to also fall in love with Vicky. Later on fine day Aatmaram comes to that Vicky has fallen in love with a prostitute’s daughter and this leads to a fight between Vicky and Aatmaram, leading to Vicky leaving the house and Atmaram changing his will and transferring the whole of properties presently n his name to his daughter Aarthi alone. Vicky is angry at his father but is not interested in the share of property. Meanwhile Ravi asks Suraj to even act as if he is loving Aarthi and to marry her later so that now that Vicky has been debarred by Aatmaram, the whole of the property of Aatmram would be in the name of Aarthi alone and by this way by becoming Arthi’s trusted husband, Suraj can later become proud owner of Atmaram’s property. Meanwhile while trying to woo Aarthi, Suraj starts ignoring Poonam but Poonam who is not aware of 2 facts that Suraj never ever fell in love with him and that presently he is also trying to make Aarthi trust him blindly, invites Suraj to her room in the hotel where she dances to celebrate her birthday. But the same night she gets murdered. Aarthi who is very keen and enthusiastic to become a detective herself is put on an operation by Ravi to provide evidence that Suraj is involved in the murder of Poonam and to start collecting evidence but convinces Aarthi to not inform DIG Sharma or any police inspector about this.

The 4 youngsters Suraj, Aarthi, Vicky, secretary to Ravi trust the Lawyer cum Novelist Mr. Ravi, so much that they blindly follow his dictates. But this leads to Suraj being accused in murder of Poonam, Vicky being suspected of kidnapping or being responsible for Atmaram missing. The rest of the story is about whether Ravi is a fraud mastermind who is involved in all these events or is innocent? Story is about unfolding the mystery as to how the things he made the 4 youngsters do, will help in ensuring that Chamanlals money of 10 Crores does not go to Vakil Jamuna Das and Babubhai but to the right person and in ensuring that his own mother does not get into trouble.





Full Cast & Crew

Directed by 

Sikander Bharti

Writing Credits (in alphabetical order)  

Tanveer Khan ... (dialogue)
Shabdh Kumar

Cast (in credits order)  


Rajesh Khanna ...
Lawyer and Novelist Ravi Varma
Chunky Pandey ...
Suraj
Amrita Singh ...
Aarthi Saxena
Sonu Walia ...
Poonam
Deepika ...
Ravi's secretary
Sadashiv Amrapurkar ...
Vakil Jamuna Das
Avinash Wadhavan ...
Vicky
Kiran Kumar ...
Babubhai
Om Shivpuri ...
Aatmaram
Sudhir Dalvi ...
Chamanlal
Satyendra Kapoor ...
DIG Sharma
Mohini Sharma
Amita Nangia
Mac Mohan
Master Aditya Sharma ...
young Ravi Verma
Paintal
Create a character page for: ?

Produced by 

Waman K. Dehsmukh ... producer
Bharat Thakur ... executive producer
Meena Thakur ... associate producer

Music by 

Bappi Lahiri

Art Direction by 

R.K. Handa

Stunts 

Akbar Bakshi ... stunts

Music Department 

Anjaan ... lyrics
Sikander Bharti ... lyrics
Bappi Lahiri ... musical director

Other crew 

Krishna Bagga ... audiography
Pappu Khanna ... choreography       
The world of fictional work can be classified in various categories / genres. One immensely popular category of such work is the stories of crime detection genre. People from all over the world have been reading such stories with a great interest for over a century. In the post-independence India, several Indian authors have produced detectives who are the desi versions of Sherlock Holmes, Perry Mason or Hercule Poirot. Such novels (alongwith the romantic and social novels) were a runaway success in India through the pocket book versions which were quite cheap and easily affordable by common readers until the advent of internet finally led to the dilution of the reading habit of the Indians and reading such books no longer remained their favourite pastime. However in the heyday of the pocket book business, not only millions of Indians read the detective novels but a sizable chunk of such readers believed in their stories also.

When this profession was at its peak (the decline started soon thereafter due to cable TV and internet), there came a Bollywood movie which portrayed a detective novelist as its hero. This movie is a suspense-thriller made in the style of formula-based potboilers. It's Rupaye Dus Karod (1991).

Rupaye Dus Karod (ten crores of rupees) is the story of a detective novelist (writing in Hindi, of course) - Ravi Varma (Rajesh Khanna) whose father had to flee from India in his childhood itself because of a conspiracy masterminded by his wicked business partners (Kiran Kumar and Sadashiv Amrapurkar). Brought up by his mother, he obtains a law degree but does not practise and instead writes Hindi novels of crime detection genre. Being the hero of a Bollywood movie, he is successful and famous in his profession. His father transmits a sum of Rs. 10 crores from abroad for his family and now the baddies (his so-called old friends and ex-business partners) are interested in usurping this huge sum. They are well-aware of the talent of Ravi Varma and therefore, they hire his services to draw a scheme so that this money could be usurped by them. For compelling him to do this job for them, they kidnap his mother and threaten to kill her.

Now, to save his mother's life, Ravi Varma agrees to work for them and prepare a chain of small schemes which combined together, develop into a great scheme through which the villains could usurp the hefty sum of Rs. 10 crores. However, since our hero is not a baddie himself and he is doing all this under compulsion only, his schemes are not meant for the threatening villains only but also for himself to get rid of their pressure, save the life of his mother and finally not allow the hard-earned money of his father (he does not know that the person sending the money is his separated father only) to get into the hands of the unscrupulous people. He involves some youngsters in his scheme as his assistants - Chunkey Pandey who is the son of Kiran Kumar and keeps on chasing skirts, Amrita Singh who is very keen and enthusiastic to become a detective herself, Avinash Wadhavan who is her brother, Deepika Chikhliya who is actually the assistant of the novelist hero etc. During the proceedings, another young girl - Sonu Waalia gets murdered. Now this story does not remain restricted to the scheming of usurping of the money mentioned in its title but gets transformed into a murder mystery. However, as expected, the hero turns the tables on the opponents, resolves the murder mystery, makes his young comrades come out of the legal trap they have been caught in and gets reunited with his parents in the climax.

Rupaye Dus Karod is one of those movies which were made on novel themes and good scripts but the penchant of the movie makers for the regular Bollywood formulae to ensure that the movie did well on the box office diluted the quality of the product coming on the screen before the audience. I always fail to understand why these filmmakers never realize that going for the regular formulae (songs, dances, over the top comedy, fights etc.) without a need, takes away the advantage of the novelty of the idea and the good script available with them and proves counter-productive also because instead of boosting the box office performance of the movie, such useless things make an adverse impact on the same.

And therefore, Rupaye Dus Karod is also no better than the run-of-the-mill Bollywood movies that used to come during the seventies, the eighties and the early nineties. The movie is entertaining, no doubt but it's not as good as it could have been, given the good story idea which appears to have been lifted from some thriller novel itself. The movie has everything - comedy, romance, sentiments, ideals, action and mystery. However the whole movie is just an average product. A sort of seriousness is missing in the narrative as well as many characters of the story which should have been there to make an impact. The ending scene also contains novelty but again it's not as impressive as it could have been.

Chunkey Pandey and Amrita Singh have tried their level best to make the audience laugh (though they look less humorous, more ridiculous). Rajesh Khanna is miscast in the lead role. Sadashiv Amrapurkar has got ample footage in the screenplay but he is also stereotyped. Avinash Wadhavan and Sonu Waalia are the better performers in this movie.

Summing up, if you are also fond of detective novels (written in any language) and also feel that the incidents shown in such stories are close to reality, then you may like this movie. Otherwise also, this movie is a good one time watch and not bad to watch on TV / computer in a lazy afternoon.

No comments: