Mr. Natwarlal (1979)

Mr. Natwarlal   (1979)                                

Starring:

Amitabh Bachchan, Rekha, Ajit

Lotta one named people in Bollywood.  This is like having a movie starring both Madonna and Cher. What a chilling thought.  

AB is a little boy raised by his brother and sister-in-law.  His brother is an uncorruptable cop, which of course means the bad guy, Vikram, must be out to get him.  Vikram terrorizes the family and makes the sister infertile so AB grows up to be a small time criminal, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor (see?  He’s good!) and all the while vowing to destroy Vikram.  He gets his chance when he is tricked into stealing a diamond necklace and taking it to Vikram at some border village for a swap. 

 

Vikram has set up shop in some diamond mines outside the village and he’s employed a tiger to make it look like villagers are being eaten when really his goons are kidnapping them and forcing them into slave labor.  When AB arrives at the village, the people think he’s the tiger hunter they’ve been praying for.  Well, that they’ve been doing a musical number around the altar for anyway.  So he stays and he fights the tiger with no weapons (he and Rekha, with whom he falls in love) and by that I mean neither they nor the tiger have any weapons.  Because they don’t appear to have any more than a tiny scratch on them after they defeat the tiger.  Why are the villagers so scared of this animal?  It’s apparently not dangerous.  So they cage the tiger and AB makes his presence known to Vikram so Vik decides to starve AB out of the village so he can kill him.  The village has smartly stored all its grain stacked up on the road on the precipice of a huge hill.  Good thinking.  No one could ever steal it that way.  Which of course the bad guys do.  Hilarious taunting dances around the pots of stolen food ensues. 

Ugh, this plot is a lot longer in describing than I thought it would be.  Cut to the end.  AB’s brother and sister in law come to rescue him, they all, along with the entire village, get put into a cave jail, Vikram plants mines in the cave and then escapes with the diamonds.  AB makes a daring and utterly unbelievable escape, frees everyone, and catches and kills Vikram by pushing him into a large “V” that’s attached to the back of his jeep and is apparently made out of six inch blades.  AB and Rekha marry and have a son and everyone in the audience who knows the two of them were having an affair at the time is utterly repelled and hoping that his wife Jaya, whom everyone loves, isn’t watching.  AB and Rekha’s greatest hits probably aren’t in the Bachchans’ home DVD collection…