It is not easy to translate written words into images, as it is not to remake a film in a language different from the original and with a set of new actors. Vikram Vedha – which opened in Tamil in 2017 with Vijay Sethupathi (he was given top billing) and R. Madhavan and written-helmed by Gayathri and Pushkar – has been remade in Hindi.
A short teaser of the new Vikram Vedha – also directed by the same husband-wife duo – was released on Wednesday, and it stars Saif Ali Khan as an encounter specialist and Hrithik Roshan as a gangster. The earlier edition had Sethupathi playing the bad man and Madhavan the policeman with a ruthless streak, who brags about “murdering” men on the run from the law.
In a review of the Tamil movie I had written: “It is rare that I find a Tamil film that fascinates, and Pushkar-Gayathri’s Vikram Vedha starring two very different kinds of actors tops in script and performance. The story of a cat-and-mouse game played by an encounter cop and a hardened-by-circumstance don may not be exactly oven-fresh, but the ability of the husband and wife team helming the film to adapt the age-old, but timeless folklore of King Vikramadityan and Vedhalam (Betal) to the crime and criminality of modern times is what makes Vikram Vedha sparkle.
“Sethupathi’s opening appearance – about 30 minutes into the movie – is one that nobody is going to forget. Even as Madhavan’s Vikram is gloating with his teammates over his recent encounter in which several of Vedha’s men have been shot dead, the don walks into the police station with a swaggering stoop, gun in hand. And as Vikram and other policemen run down the stairs to confront him, Vedha throws his weapon on the ground, kneels down and says he is ready to surrender.”
“Sethupathi makes villainy look so natural, almost ethical, with his mesmeric, cool take on a part that would never have been easy to walk through,” I wrote.
Cut to the teaser. Although it is unfair to judge performances in a few minutes, it seemed Roshan lacks the vileness of Sethupathi, the sarcasm, and the bottled-up feeling of a man wronged time and again, and this includes the killing of his younger brother by Vikram. Khan essaying the guy on the right side of the law comes with too many mannerisms that do little justice to what Madhavan had infused into Vikram.
The work appears to be melodramatic, which Gayatri and Pushkar had kept scrupulously aside in their original creation. But, well, these are my first impressions of the teaser, but I suppose one should wait for Vikram Vedha in Hindi– opening on September 30 – to make a firm conclusion.
