‘Dhamaka’ is not the first time that Bollywood has tried its hand at remaking a South Korean thriller. Sadly, it will also not be the last. It's incredible but not surprising that Ram Madhvani managed to turn writer-director Kim Byung-woo's superb 2013 South Korean thriller ‘The Terror Live’ into a mediocre film.
In their misguided attempts to Indianise intelligent pulp fiction, Bollywood filmmakers and screenwriters have a habit of tempering the cynicism and gore of South Korean thrillers.
They infuse the material with the worst tendencies of Bollywood filmmaking: deep-fried sentimentality, turgid dialogue and emphasising every beat with background score that is usually unremarkable.
The pioneers of the trend are Sanjay Gupta, who remade ‘Oldboy’ (2003) as ‘Zinda’ (2006), and Mohit Suri, who has three South Korean remakes under his belt: ‘A Bittersweet Life’ (2005) remade as ‘Awarapan’ (2007), ‘The Chaser’ (2008) remade as ‘Murder 2’ (2011), and’ I Saw The Devil’ (2010) remade as ‘Ek Villain’ (2014). Ram Madhvani, a better director than Gupta and Suri, and co-writer Puneet Sharma, chose a relatively simpler film to adapt. Mostly set in a news studio, ‘The Terror Live’ follows a news anchor held hostage in his seat during a live broadcast as he is made to negotiate with a man claiming to be a construction worker, who has bombed a bridge he had helped build.
He is threatening to cause more damage if the president does not apologise to him for not compensating the families of his ex-colleagues who died while working on the bridge. The story unfolds as a morality play in which the anchor then has to choose between helping the man get his apology, which would save lives but leave the government red-faced, and sticking to his boss's brief which would lead to many deaths but bring high viewership to the channel. The film's themes and its pessimistic denouement highlight government apathy and the complicity of private news channels in politicians' misadventures.
Hindustan Times
