Baazi (1995, India)

A Bollywood musical film by Ashutosh Gowariker, in Hindi with English subtitles. Yes, that's the Eiffel tower in the background of this stage musical presentation.

Amar Damjee (played by Amir Khan) is a very efficient policeman. When a murderous gang is intent on assassinating several top politicians investigating a massive arms corruption case, Amar saves them by personal heroism. We learn that Amar himself saw his policeman father and his mother gunned down by thugs when he was a small boy.

A journalist, Sanjana Roy, played by Mamta Kulkarni, tries to interview him for a television company, but Amar wants to keep his anonymity, and gets his house servant to do the interview, pretending to be him. The girl is taken in, but back at the television company her boss is not; he is furious. Sanjana tries again, and manages to trick Amar into going to a country location by telephoning Amar and saying that she has the servant as a hostage. He goes there and they make friends, cemented by a song and dance routine.

Amar agrees that Sanjana can accompany him for a week or so to film his methods in action; after a daring single-handed arrest of four men smuggling a tanker-load full of ammunition, he goes to the dealer undercover to get more evidence. His cover is blown and he narrowly escapes, with Sanjana being held as a hostage for a moment.

The baddies are determined to eliminate such an effective policeman, and an elaborate case is set up in which a girl, Anjali, is raped and killed, and Amar's fingerprints are left at the scene of the crime, apparently using special gloves with his fingerprints impressed on them -- although the fingerprint expert says in court that this is impossible. Amar is sentenced to execution.

However, the van taking him to the prison crashes and he escapes; he discovers the fingerprint expert and forces him to confess that he helped two police inspectors to contrive the evidence; Amar takes him, with Sanjana, to the police commissioner's office and all is exposed. But the two guilty policemen are there and when they are confronted, they kill the Commissioner. Amar and Sanjana escape, but now everyone believes that Amar killed the commissioner.

Meanwhile, the Chief Minister is seen on television saying that he now knows the identity of the corrupt politician in the original arms scandal. He is in the USA having gone there to talk to an American arms company understood to be complicit in the corruption. He will be flying back to India to inform the government of his findings. His Deputy, Chaturvedi, is in fact the corrupt ringleader, and he decides to intercept him at the airport and have him killed there. But meanwhile a mysterious letter has reached the two police inspectors working for him. The letter has been sent by a Julie Briganza, from the Kit Kat Club. They have to go there to receive information about the killing that Amar was framed for.

They go, and a lively and seductive dance routine is in progress and the two policemen are clearly enthralled. The routine lasts some time, and when it is over they follow the dancer to her office. She tells them that she knows who really killed Anjali; when they don't offer the large bribe she asks for, she threatens to phone the police, and they pull a gun on her. Things calm down rather and they all go together to see the boss. Miss Julie's makeup seems to have slipped at this stage, but the policemen don't recognise Amar. They go to Mr Big, and Amar sees for the first time who it is -- Chaturvedi.

Chaturvedi is clearly entranced by her beauty, and in a less believable fantasy sequence, they go to his bedroom where he plans to make love to her. She asks him to look away while she strips, and of course it is him, apparently wearing his shoes and trousers. He takes Chaturvedu prisoner and goes down to where his henchmen are; they are all under arrest, except that one of them has got Sanjana hostage, and if Amar doesn't throw down his gun, she will die.

Amar throws down his gun, and Chaturvedi now insists that he go to the airport and assassinate the Chief Minister, otherwise Sanjana will be killed. As everyone will have guessed, Amar goes to the airport and apparently shoots the Chief Minister, but the shooting is a fake. Chaturvedi, watching on television, is deceived but the Chief Minister and Amar come back to confront him. There are another fifteen minutes of the film to run, revolving round Chaturvedi's desperate attempts to escape, if necessary by killing everyone around him. Needless to say, however, the story has a happy, and morally satisfactory, ending.

HF May 2005

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