Not just by crime and punishment....

ONE 2 KA 4 (Plaza, Chanakya and other Delhi theatres): BOLLYWOOD HEROINES are promptly written off the moment they tie the knot whereas the rule does not seem to apply to male stars. I asked a female psychiatrist if she had anything to say about it. Sure, she said, Indian women do not mind if their Prince Charming is married but Indian men always want their dream girl to be virgin snow-white. Well, there have been exceptions to the rule, like Meena Kumari. But by and large it is both true and tragic.

Take Juhi Chawla, for instance, who is truly the saving grace of ``One 2 Ka 4'' here now. None of the top actresses today is gifted with such unfailing sense of humour and few can match her timing which she has refined from film to film. From the vulnerable virginal look in `Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak' to a tantalising woman in ``Darr'' to the femme fatale now in ``One 2 Ka 4'', the transition is complete. In Hollywood, like Julia Roberts, her career would have at this point touched the peak. Alas, Bollywood wizards claim a decline in her following because of her marriage.

Yet her effortless, fluent cameo of a Haryanvi girl is really a connoisseur's delight. It looks like Diwali crackers in the general gloom of the film created by a grim battle between cops and drug peddlers and a father tending to the needs of four motherless children before jumping to his next gunbattle.

That brings us to director K. Shashilal Nair who gave us ``Angaar'' which, you might recall, was based on the life of an underworld don who unlike his evil son had not renounced his human quality. Some say it was based on the life of Karim Lala. It was, in a way, a first of its kind, in that the film gave us within the mainstream cinema framework a fairly authoritative account of the alleged nexus between the underworld and the politicians who manipulated the law and order machinery to suit their nefarious activities.

True, ``One 2 Ka 4'' has the same astonishing technical excellence, same impressive special effects, and the same feel for song and dance that one saw in ``Angaar''. Alas, it doesn't have the same deep concern for contemporary life which gave ``Angaar'' its distinctive touch. There is an unmitigated Bollywood-cum-Hollywood version of criminology but no sociology, home-grown or imported. If the visual narrative oversteps its attempt to study the emotional and family life of an honest policeman fighting the druglord who owns, any way, the other half of the police force, it is only to tell us that we are paying peanuts to our man in khaki and the nation does not even care to look after the orphans left behind by those who lay down their lives for us.

That may be the only point relevant to the Indian situation today. The anti-drug special police task force working from plush offices that look like those belonging to a multinational company may be a dream yet to come true in India. But it already has come true in the vicinity of Hollywood which has produced countless spirited pairs of uniformed men endowed with undying integrity and all kinds of other unusual traits. It is, therefore, really difficult to pinpoint which one of them has served as a paradigm for our daredevil duo of Arun Verma (Shah Rukh Khan) and Javed Bhai (Jackie Shroff). Not too long ago we saw a Hollywood film, ``The Professionals'', in which a French actor plays a mercenary who kills for money but saves the life of a girl from the police department's head, a druglord himself and a killer to boot. The bent police chief threw away his badge of honour not for dirty lucre but in pursuit of absolute personal power -- a feeling far, far more inebriating than any drug could produce. His gunbattles became an expression of his inner insanity. Ultimately he meets his maker because he runs into an equally insane man, someone who could kill for love.

``One 2 Ka 4'' offers no such in-depth study of the human situation. That probably is the reason why the violence involving the gun-toting pair, Khan and Shroff, does not rise above the mundane. At its best, the film remains a simple crime-and- punishment story. Neither Shah Rukh nor Jackie can manage to look authentic though there is no denying that they do manage to deliver some power-packed emotional moments to the visual narrative. You can trust Jackie to do something like that.

Of course, it was always a great cinematic asset for Shah Rukh Khan to look like Shah Rukh Khan. But perhaps he has been too long at it. And, really, he should have left taking-off-the-shirt business to Salman Khan who has more to show for his pains than any other hero in business, except Hrithik. That leaves us with four lovable kids -- Baby Ghazala, Baby Sana, Master Shanno and Master Hunny -- who provide the emotional glow to the film.

Producer Nazir Ahmad has mounted the film as ambitiously as he had mounted the Amitabh Bachchan-Sri Devi starrer ``Khuda Gawah''. He has provided the right kind of locations for A.R. Rahman's music which has his distinctive touch. At least one song has already hit the popularity charts.

``One 2 Ka 4'' is a long-awaited film, for Shah Rukh Khan plays a police officer for the first time, mixing action with romance. Let us hope his admirers will stay with him and producer Nazir Ahmad will have better luck than he had with his previous effort. The title itself seems to have been borrowed from a song picturised on Anil Kapoor in a Subhash Ghai film.

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