Movie Review: Nastik (The Athiest) (1983)

In the long and illustrious career of the Indian superstar, Amitabh Bachchan: alas this movie does nothing to contribute to it.

The movie sucks big time. I am truly struggling to find some positives in this film. Yes, Big B was in his heyday when this film was made, but…….. Yes, Hema Malini looks ethereal but there’s only so much that you can watch of her. And to top it all the film is not even so atrociously bad that you can really enjoy it. It’s just pathetic and at the end of it, you are left shaking your head.

Characters and situations pop out of nowhere. Marriages are fixed, introductions between long-lost relations happen and problems are resolved in the blink of an eye. No one seems to have bothered about continuity. View it for some of the most stupid editing this side of the Atlantic. The music is singularly uninspiring. Amateurish and incompetent scripting, uninspiring acting and contrived situations rule the roost. The audience seems to be an intruder in such a madcap fast-forward vendetta story.

Roughly from 1983 when this movie was made, till about the year 2000, most of the Big B movies have been sheer garbage, with some exceptions. Nastik seems to have started the downslide.

The story:

If after all this ranting of mine, someone is still interested in the story, well here goes.

This was the age of the evil zamindars (rural landlords) as villains in the Hindi film. And so the film starts-off with an introductory song with the kids (soppy ones, at that) of a village priest (the eternally grieving actor, Bharat Bhushan) singing to the lord in the temple. The resident evil zamindar’s son makes plans to steal the valuable jewels of the temple idol and in the process manages to murder the priest, burn the family house down, render the priests wife blind, separates the family, the kid running away from the law to the city and turning into a Nastik (Athiest). All of that before the credits and within the first 30 minutes.

And so the runaway kid turns to thievery (and into Amitabh Bachchan too) in his youth. His partners-in-crime whom he bumps-into on the way are Pran and Hema Malini. Pran with a dismal past of his own (a raped daughter now mentally deranged). Incidently the villain for both turns out to be the zamindar (and rapist) who has now grown-up into Amjad Khan.

Amjad Khan (who was stabbed by the young AB leading to the loss of his eyesight in one eye) has by now evolved from relieving temple idols of their jewels. He is now into harebrained schemes of smuggling diamonds through false eyes and smuggling gold and drugs through idols and statues. Sarika (Kamal Hassan’s real-life ex-wife) stars in a cameo as AK’s sister with a minor crush on AB.

AB in the city who was under the impression that his mother and sister burnt-down with the house, suddenly bumps across (and keeps bumping-across) them in the city. The finale? Well: they all troop back to his village to take revenge on the zamindar and AB is turns into a reborn theist on the way.

And so

When you do maneuver your way through those old tired clichés, soppy mums, the gangsters lairs with the ubiquitous red light at the entrance and lots of multicoloured flashing lights inside, all you are left with is a buzzing head and a severe indigestion of Hindi films.

The chemistry between AB and HM is something to watch though, if you insist on some takeaways from the film.

Credits:

Starring

Amitabh Bachchan

Hema Malini

Pran

Deven Verma

Amjad Khan

Sarika

Story/Screenplay: Sachin Bhowmick

Dialogue: Ahsan Rizvi

Playback: Kishore Kumar, Asha Bhosale, Mahendra Kapoor, Amit Kumar, Manhar, Anup Jalota, Alka Yagnik, Sadhna Sargam

Lyrics: Anand Bakshi

Music: Kalyanji Anandji

Producer: Vinod Doshi

Director: Pramod Chakravorty