If Tarantino made Dabangg

Oct 2 • Features, Movies • 384 Views • 2 Comments

To imagine Quentin Tarantino making a Bollywood movie would be letting your imagination run wild after a 3 or 4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (never mind what that means) overdose. There are some things that just can’t happen. Superman will never wear his underwear inside his pants, Justin Bieber will never grow facial hair and Tarantino will never make foray into the murky abyss of Indian cinema. That is where writers step in; to concoct dreams regardless of how feasible they are.

 Take the mega block and brain-buster, Salman Khan’s muscles-starrer, numerologically challenged Dabangg, for instance. Though the film had a borderline retarded script and resulted in a drastic drop of IQ points among a range of viewers, Tarantino is one of those few, talented directors who could have made it fit for intellectual viewership. The juvenile action sequences would have been so much better, giving them all a Kill Bill-esque feel which works so well with action aficionados. Chulbul Pandey and his dead-leech moustache would be appropriately named Mr. Brown – following the precedent set in Reservoir Dogs. Everyone associates Indians with the colour brown due to their complexion anyway (if it were a Chinese movie, I can bet my house he would be named Mr. Yellow)! Sonakshi would be a true femme fatale – a mixed martial arts-champion – particularly lethal with nunchacks, shurikens and pencils. Munni? Munni would not be there at all!

 However, the last fight would be the absolute clincher. It would cease to be an attempt of two brawny mannequins trying to strip each other. In the hands of Quentin Tarantino, it would have had the potential to turn into one of the best Bollywood action sequences of the year. Salman in a black tuxedo with NO shirt-gone-with-the-wind act. A battle spanning twenty real-time minutes, involving the ubiquitous use of sledgehammers, machetes and baseball bats. Picture this – just when Mr. Brown is going to gain the upper edge, the enemy whistles for his acolytes and Brown hacks through them to reach him, leaving decapitated heads, eviscerated intestines and blown out brains in his wake. The enemy’s death could be kept the same, with Tarantino’s slight Midas touch to it. Plug his mouth to the vehicle exhaust and ensure it explodes like a water balloon in the end. Fade to black.

 As a man who values skills over names, big money actors would go right out of the window in an Indian Tarantino flick. Instead, you are more likely to see the relative unknown and underrated actors, like Vinay Pathak, Sharman Joshi, Ranveer Shorey, Naseeruddin Shah and the likes that will come to the fore. This will be a burst of fresh air and kick to the guts at the same time.

Every Tarantino film has one or more of his trademark moves, be it the from the trunk up-shot, minute attention to subtle details you are bound to miss (like revealing the bride’s name on her flight ticket in Kill Bill Vol. 1) not laying as much emphasis on the story as on the execution; these all are watermarks on every movie that Q makes.

However, that list also involves amputated limbs, exposure to the darker side of human idiosyncrasies and enough gore to make a stereotypical Indian wet his pants; all things condemned by the Censor Board which thinks that Indian viewers are still in their nappies. Tarantino could as well be their worst nightmare.

But then, of course, this is a very, very far-fetched idea; almost to the point of being impossible. As I said before, Tarantino in Bollywood would be a figment on a MDMA addict.

Wait, I just did that. There goes my secret.

Oops.

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