Muqaddar Ka Sikandar (1978)

Star Power: Amitabh Bachchan, Vinod Khanna, Rekha

Overall Rating: 4 out of 7 Chilies

Music: 5.5 out of 7 Chilies

Choreography: 5 out of 7 Chilies

Synopsis:

A young orphaned boy finds work in the house of a wealthy man, Ramnath, and becomes friends with the man's daughter, Kaamna. Out on the streets of the city, the boy saves Ramnath's housekeeper's purse from thieves and in gratitude she adopts him on the spot, giving him the name Sikandar. Ramnath has always been suspicious of orphans, as one was responsible for the death of his wife, and when Sikandar sneaks into the girl's room one night to deliver a birthday present, he accuses the boy of stealing and throws him and his mother out. The shock is too much for Sikandar's new mother, who dies in the street, entrusting the well-being of her daughter to Sikandar's care. Many years later, Sikandar (Amitabh Bachchan), has become a wealthy businessman, while Ramnath's fortunes have taken a turn for the worse. This reversal of situations has not improved Kaamna's or her father's opinions of him, as they both still believe him to be a thief and mistakenly assume his new wealth is ill-gotten. Can Sikandar overcome her misconceptions and find a way to express his love?...

Comments:

A decent 70's movie which was pretty popular when it premiered, but not one of my favorites, I admit. The moral the movie seems to be pushing comes early on in the film, when Sikandar meets with a fakir soon after his mother's death and the fakir tells him he can become "master of his destiny" (Muqaddar ka Sikandar) if he can laugh in the face of sorrow and death. However, this maxim doesn't seem to be exactly carried out by characters in the events that follow and it's hard to tell whether that's intentional or not. There are a number of subplots that make keeping up with the action difficult at times. Also distracting are the multiple times when the story slips into Sikandar imagining himself doing something without there being any indication beforehand that the scene isn't really happening. This is novel the first time it happens, but it can get confusing when you try to keep track of what's actually happened. Rekha does a lovely, sympathetic job in the role of a dancing girl whose house Sikandar visits, but because she is a dancing girl, in typical Bollywood fashion her chances for happiness seem shaky from the start. The music is thoroughly enjoyable and the choreography is quite good, especially for a 70's movie, but there's nothing I would really consider a must-see. Overall, it seems a little like the screenwriters wrote themselves into a corner and couldn't come up with a way to end things without coming up with an awkward result.