The villain is surrounded by his goons. He's telling the hero to back off, but the hero won’t relent. The villain threatens him with a thousand more goons. The hero stares him right in the eye and says, ‘Kutton ka jhund kitna bhi bada ho, unke liye ek sher hee kaafi hai.’ (No matter how big the pack of dogs, just one lion is enough to handle them.) The audience erupts in applause! That’s Ajay Devgn on the screen in a film that wasn’t even set-up to be an immersive cinematic experience in the way Hayao Miyazaki’s work is. This is a pure popcorn flick with lots and lots of cheese.
What is it about Ajay Devgn then that makes him such a watchable actor?
He appeared on the big screen in 1991, his legs in a gymnastic split between two moving motorbikes. Ajay Devgn gave us our own version of Jean Claude Van Damme in Phool Aur Kaante, a quintessential action flick. The film became an instant hit not just because of action, but also because of the soundtrack (Nadeem Shravan’s songs include ‘Tumse Milne Ko Dil Karta Hai’ and ‘Dheere Dheere Pyar Ko Badhana Hai’).
The Bollywood remake of French Kiss saw him fumble around a girl in search of her boyfriend in Pyar To Hona Hi Tha. He managed to convince us that he was a thief with a golden heart. But the intensity of his voice found an ideal register when he played the strong, silent man in movies like Thakshak, Company and Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai.
In Thakshak, Devgn played an anti-hero battling his conscience and the morass of violence that he found himself getting drawn into, deeper and deeper. Whatever else was odd about the movie (Rahul Bose’s hamming, the incessant wind-chime in Ishaan’s home, Tabu’s obvious discomfort and Govind Nihalani’s need to make contemporary mainstream cinema), Ajay Devgn saying, ‘Tumhara mujh par koi haq nahi’ seemed less confident than in Company, where Ajay Devgn played a gangster called Malik - his cigarette seemed to speak volumes for him in this film.
As Omi in Omkara, he was unmatchable. The dialogues were great, of course (‘Hamari jaat tumne khoob pehchani, vakeel saab, par apni beti ke dil ki baat nahi sun sake.’ 'You recognised my caste right, mister lawyer, but you didn’t recognise who your daughter’s beats for, eh?’) But the smile with which he calmly accepted Vakeel saab’s insults was peerless. I don’t know any contemporary Bollywood actor who could play the role of the jealous Othello with quite the same rigour and result.
He’s not conventionally good-looking, but he’s got the voice and he has the ability to move smoothly between playing a gangster, a cop, and even the hapless husband in a romantic drama. Filmmakers who cast him as a cop probably just tell him to get the uniform from home! He’s probably essayed the role of a police officer in more films than most Bollywood stars: examples include Singham, Singham Returns, Simmba, Gangajal, and Apaharan where he is an aspiring officer.
At one point, a sense of déjà vu set in when an Ajay Devgn film was announced film. A certain section of film critics with permanently raised eyebrows looked down their faux patrician noses at ‘another massy film’ from the star. And the rest of the world anticipated a good action flick. And just when we were expecting eardrum-piercing sounds between cops and baddies, we got Ajay Devgn as Vanraj singing out of tune and winning hearts alongside Salman Khan and Aishwarya Rai in a romantic film called Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam.
The guy who made the very Marathi phrase ‘doke sataklay’ (head has exploded) into a dialogue children sing and dance to (Aata majhi satakli) has a comedic bone too! Ajay Devgn played a super-funny guy in Rohit Shetty’s GolMaal franchise. Those films may not win awards, but they were super hits at the box office, with genuinely funny lines that Devgn seemed to deliver effortlessly.
He took to the OTT platforms like a duck to water, making Rudra (the Indian version of Luther).
Ajay Devgn has had ups and downs in his career, and sometimes you wonder why you don’t get to see more Omkara and less De De Pyaar De (the only thing party animals will remember is the song ‘Hauli Hauli’) from him.
His sense of the business of cinema is worth mentioning. He has not only started a successful VFX company, but his film production company has done well too. He has even produced a Marathi language film Aapla Manus.
Devgn's impactful role in RRR showed that the 53-year-old actor could bring the same intensity to a small role as to a feature-length film he is headlining - 31 years after his acting debut, Devgn rarely disappoints and never seems to get old.
His directorial debut Runway 34 may not have done well at all commercially, but it pit Ajay Devgn against Amitabh Bachchan, and he held his own. Though people compared it to the actual events upon which the film was based, the film showed how far the lad who performed the Phool Aur Kaante stunt has come.
His choice of acting in Drishyam pit him against Mohanlal, the superstar of the South and again, Ajay Devgn held his own. The trailer of Drishyam 2 dropped earlier this month. And we can hardly wait.
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