Man of Action

Prabhudheva

After R… Rajkumar last year, that gave actor Shahid Kapoor a much needed fillip in his career, there was no room left for doubt that director Prabhudheva, also an actor and an excellent dancer is no fluke success in Hindi cinema. Just the year before, he gave Khiladi Kumar a resounding hit in Rowdy Rathore which was preceded by Wanted, the watershed film in Salman Khan’s resurgence, post Tere Naam.
Prabhudheva now has Action Jackson coming up with none other than Ajay Devgn in the lead, promising to be ‘criminally good’ making its way to the theaters. From the promos, the likelihood of this film hitting the bullseye seems rather high. There is some seriously slick, badass action, a hint of comedy and then some more.
Interestingly though, Prabhudheva is a reticent and unassuming man, but blessed with an astute sense of cinema. The action, comedy and romance in his films are always customised according to the actor’s personality. There was a droll, intense and undemonstrative Salman in Wanted, a combination of the simple-hearted and the comic for Akshay Kumar in Rowdy Rathore, and a younger carefree action hero in R… Rajkumar. A prominent feature of his film besides the hero is the naach-gaana routine. Harking back to the times when naach-gaana was almost a narrative tool, accentuating the dramatic twists and turns of the story, Prabhudheva uses his songs well. All the aforementioned films have had to their credit some widely played chart-busters which were extremely popular among the masses, a must in blockbuster films. Of course, he isn’t the first director from the south to have gained a foothold in Bollywood—Mani Ratnam, Priyadarshan, Santosh Sivan, Ram Gopal Varma have been there and done that in different measure, but like Varma, Prabhudheva seems to have the potential to create a very unique brand of cinema.
And shifting base to Bollywood has worked well for him. In the beginning he was practically living out of a suitcase, constantly shuttling between Chennai, Hyderabad and Mumbai, but given the amount of work he’s now handling, most of his time is spent in the Maximum City. He has often maintained that being an actor himself helps him etch out the male protagonists rather well. That he has been able to give several sagging careers a boost is testimony to his understanding of cinema and India’s ‘mass audience’. In the new, urbane Bollywood he’s that rare sort still who understands the desi, the heartland audience really well. His films may have Hollywood style action, but the texture is quite earthy; you may still find heroes that come from poor families, a far cry from the urbane metrosexuals that populate the multiplex cinema. Neither do they belong to cuss-word spewing set made popular by Anurag Kashyap films—more Ram Lakhan than Bullett Raja.
That he seems to have found his groove in Bollywood is probably good news for both actors and the audience that enjoys a slightly retro style entertainment packed with macho men, mean moves and actions that speak louder than words.
Bollywood requires a constant supply of entertainment software of all types and has obviously welcomed the director with open arms. If Action Jackson hits the jackpot in terms of numbers, Prabhudheva is clearly, home.