Salman Khan starrer Dabangg 3 hit the silver screens today and the initial critical response hasn’t been good. A sequel nobody asked for, according to a reviewer from Scroll.in said that the film “takes a ‘best-of’ approach and rehashes lines and moments from the previous productions, and the result is about as riveting as Chulbul’s secrets.”
The name Dabangg quickly reminds us of a few things but subtlety and realistic portrayal of the khaki-clad cops, aren’t one of them. Films in the Dabangg and Singham series show police officers more or less like a superhero who can easily beat twenty bad guys in physics-laws-defying slow motion sequences. However the underlying debate always remains about money making vs art making.
The celluloid representation of the uniformed people wasn’t always like this. Back in 1983, Govind Nihalani made a film called Ardh Satya which portrayed a barebone version of what it’s like to be at the receiving end of things. The film benefits from a remarkable performance by Om Puri who is a man simultaneously fighting the system and his own demons.
Post Ardh Satya, there was a long void of films that centered around a cop (or a story), until in 1999 when a first time filmmaker named Eshwar Nivas, who was from Hyderabad, made Shool. Set in a small town of Bihar, the film almost felt like a documentary to me in the way the characters spoke and behaved. Manoj Bajpayee, who is from the state, must have come in handy during the research. But sadly, the film is mostly remembered for the song “U.P Bihar Lutne”.
The same year we saw Aamir Khan in Sarfarosh, another fine example of how to balance realistic treatment while also fulfilling the mainstream demands. In the following decade, there were a couple of great films in the cop genre like Rajkumar Santoshi’s Khakee, Kabeer Kaushik’s Sehar, Shimit Amin’s Ab Tak Chappan and Prakash Jha’s Gangaajal.
And then, Dabangg happened. It single handedly changed the narrative that had been built from the aforementioned films with its parodied portrayal of a cop who spits beer from his mouth on his constables. Its follow up films like Singham and Mardaani couldn’t get out of the trap in showing their lead characters as the human embodiment of Captain America (not in the spirit but action).
It’s a supply and demand phenomenon which is supported by filmmakers who aren’t really pushing the envelope in this particular genre and tend to rely on the formulaic film making. Ultimately, it boils down to jo dikhta hai vo bikta hai.