The sequel bug that’s hit Bollywood is here to stay! This time though it is not a comic caper like the endless Golmaal series but an action thriller. Uru Patel, an NRI industrialist based in L.A. and brother to the late Hollywood producer, Raju Patel (who made movies like Jungle Book and The Adventures of Pinocchio) is in India. After producing mega science fiction flicks like Cyborg 2 with Angelina Jolie, Uru is here to work on two new projects. The first one titled Hanuman is a Hollywood superhero movie set to star Dabangg star Salman Khan. The other one a desi flick is called Kaante 2. At first, I wasn’t so interested because I thought that this is just one of the many ‘never going to materialize’ sequels being announced to Kaante (Pritish Nandy was making Kaante Reloaded).
Kaante was loosely based on Quentin Tarantnino’s Reservoir Dogs and the sequel is going to be directed by a Hollywood director as well. Uru Patel’s Kaante 2 promises to stay true to the original. Paying homage to his late brother who produced the 2002 movie Kaante which had Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjay Dutt, Mahesh Manjrekar, Kumar Gaurav and Lucky Ali in lead roles and was directed by Sanjay Gupta. Uru Patel will speak about the scale of production and his expectations from the project. The original Kaante was about a bunch of robbers trying to carry out a massive heist when they discover that one of them is actually an undercover cop. Uru wants to take one to the next level, here’s hoping he finds an interesting ensemble cast and some well-directed action sequences. I am sure our junta loves a dose of killer special effects and perhaps a pole dance thrown in for good measure like the one Malaika Arora Khan did in the first one (I like!)
So anyway, I hope that for the sake of Kaante 2 and Golmaal 4 and the never ending list of sequels in 2011, movie lovers continue to watch and love them. However, it is becoming increasingly important to appreciate novel concepts as well. After a while these numerous repeats of the same old plot doesn’t spell cool anymore. The B-town obsession with sequels inspired by Hollywood (as usual) doesn’t seem to be dying down soon enough. I hope Bollywood does start rising up to some brand new ideas so there’s still a ray of hope (and a livelihood) for all those budding scriptwriters who have newer tales to tell.