Damini (1993)

This movie has been sitting on my shelf for ages, and what a beautiful movie it turned out to be when i finally sat down to watch it, a wonderful film on being true to yourself and doing the right thing, all delivered in a non preachy manner

The film starts with this quote by Mahatma Gandhi


Damini (Meenakshi Sheshadri) is a honest good natured girl who lives with her family. While performing at a charity gig alongside Aamir Khan (as himself in a special appearance). Shekhar (Rishi kapoor) the son of a wealthy industrialist who's an audience at the show is smitten by her


Shekhar tracks Damini down and proposes, Damini is taken a back by his advances as she comes from a much poorer family as well as Shekhar's quick marriage proposal.Shekhar's Parents aren't too keen on Damini as she's from a lower ecomomic background but Damini's charming honest nature wins them over and she and Shekhar get married


During Holi festival Shekhar's junior brother Rakesh along with his friends rape the family maid servant 'Urmi'. Damini witnesses the event and runs to get Shekahr to help but by then Rakesh and his friends had gang raped her. I f all their wickendess wasn't enough, they went ahead and dumped her body by the road side


When police come to investigate the matter Damini is told by her in-laws to deny she witnessed the event, they ask her to help protect their family's honour


Damini begins to feel uneasy about the whole issue, she's racked by immense guilt and feels its up to her to get Urmi justice. She confesses the truth to Inspector Ratan (Vijayendra Ghatge) and agrees to testify in court much to the anger of her in-laws who feel she's betraying them



The family are tried to court and The Gupta's appoint Barrister Chhada (Amrish Puri in a swish hairdo) to defend them. Barrister Indrajeet Chhada who is defending the Gupta's comes up with a plan to silence Damini by proving her mentally unstable to the Judge



He does this by various witnesses including her in-laws and her own father, as a result Damini is sentenced to a mental asylum for 2 weeks, there she's administered severe head shocks which starts making her mentally retarded



Damini manages to escape from the mental asylum, while on the run for her life she meets retired disillusioned lawyer Govind. She tells him her story and urges him to take up her case and get Urmi Justice


He agrees and thus commences a big court room showdown

Will Damini get Justice for urmi? Will she be proved as mentally stable? watch Damini for the answers

Damini wthout doubt has to be one of the top drama's produced in 90's bollywood, great direction, great cast and a great story, the film also deals with mutiple issues such as the lengths people would go to protect their honour, maniplulative/exploitative media, corrupt cops and the politics of rape.


This film really had me involved and i kept thinking what would i have done had i been in her shoes, would i have gone with the easy way out and agreed with my in-laws or would i fight for the truth, these are not easy questions and we see Damini's anguish over these not so easy choices. Damini also makes a point of the outspoken woman, who dares speak against the 'patriarchal powers' that be, being punished for daring to make her voice heard.

This film would have scored much higher with me if the director had been a bit more careful with his screenplay for example during Damini's trial her lawyer doesn't object to the intrusive questions Barrister Chhada asks her, the courtroom scenes were sometimes treated as a joke with both lawyers calling each other up but of course i'm sure Rajkumar Santoshi had to strike a right balance between making a powerful drama that would also be commercially successful, and i shall not hold him up for that

Great performance from Meenakshi Sheshadri, i think this is her best ever role, her portrayal of Damini was just right, so much passion, so much guilt, you feel every bit of her anguish/inner turmoil on what choice she should make.


Rumour has it that she quit the film industry as her performance of Damini didn't get her a filmfare best actress award, my dear Meenakshi forget about those award shows what matters is the appreciation and love of the fans. And might i add Meenakshi is such a fabulous intense dancer (check her out doing some traditional Indian dances in the clip below), its no wonder she currently teaches dance lessons in Plano, Texas where she now lives with her husband and kids. For more on what Meenakshi has been up to check out Nicki's great Fan Post



Good performances from Amrish Puri and Sunny Deol as well, who knew Amrish was a computer game freak, he was so funny and over the top as usual, he never bores me


Sunny Deol was loud and his dialogues from this film are said to have been the rage at the time of its release, but since i don't speak hindi i couldn't understand what the fuss was all about, but he delivered his dialogues with much gusto and passion


And of course Rishi shows us his amazing Jumper collection as well


Brilliant songs from Nadeem-Shravan as well, from the melodious 'gawah hain chand tare' which was lifted from the famous African song 'Malaika' (listen to a version of the song by 70's group Boney M. here) 'bin saajan jhoola' where Aamir khan makes a guest appearance and then my favourite has to be 'jab se tumko dekha' with lovely vocals from Kumar Sanu and Sadhana Sargam




Total Score: 7/10 (A highly engaging wonderful drama)

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Sadak (1991)

One thing i've noticed about Mahesh Bhatt's earlier films is how tightly scripted they usually are, most times his films eliminate unnecessary dross or comic side plots and just keep their basic plot. This is one such film with great performances, good songs and a hilarious Hijra you don't want to mess with

Ravi (Sanjay Dutt) is a hard working taxi driver who's deeply traumatised by his sister Roopa's death. He hopes to catch the person responsible for her death

He meets Pooja (Pooja Bhatt) and he falls for her at first sight, their love is threatened when Pooja's uncle sells her off to a pimp called Mahurani

Mahurani is one Hijra or the closest description i could find for a Hijra this side of the world would be a Transgender but you can read more on Hijra's here) you don't want to mess with, he/she has his own personal hairstylist and manicurist and he makes "Top whores" out of innocent young girls

'Fierce Maharani'


Poor Pooja had been pawned to him as her uncle couldn't pay back what he owed Maharani

When Ravi learns of it he tries to buy Pooja out but Maharani is suspicious of his intentions and he holds his friend Gotya (Deepak Tijori) as guarantee

After he returns her to the brothel, he starts making plans to get her out again, this time Maharani gets suspicious and demands he does whatever he wants to do with her in the brothel. Ravi forces his way out of Maharani's brothel with Pooja

Ravi gets Inspector Irani (Pankak Dheer) involved letting him know about his and Pooja's escape from Maharani's brothel, unknown to them is the fact that inspector Irani works closely with Maharani

Will they be able to escape Maharani's evil tactics? What evil tricks will Maharani does he have up his/her sleeve?


Overall Sadak was an entertaining watch as i've noted the film is well paced and tightly scripted with no room for silly comic side plots, the only funnies (sic) came in the form of the villain Maharani's antics


the super fierce Maharani
Sadashiv Amrapurkar as Maharani steals the show, his hijra act was so camp, over the top and ridiculous. From the way he twirls his hair and flirts ridiculously while carrying or about to carry out treacherous acts, Maharani has to be one of the funniest villains of all time in bollywood. he won the filmfare best villain award for his performance and rightfully so, he deserved it. See him in action here at around the 2:15 mark


Great passionate performance from Sanjay Dutt and in fact one does really get the impression that had he not gone to jail or not had any legal troubles he would have been one of the top actors of the 90's


Pooja Bhatt is the perfect damsel in distress and she plays it to a T, the look on her face when she's taken to Maharani's brothel is priceless, she genuinely looks scared of him


And oh yes we have heard countlessly about Bob christo & Tom Alter but i had never heard of another token white villain by the name of Gavin Packard until when i saw him in this, like Bob Christo he was mostly the villains henchman in '90s bollywood films, his imdb page lists him in over 50 movies. I have no idea where he is from and there's hardly any information on him so if anyone knows much about him please leave me a comment

Gavin packard as the token gori villain 'ggrrrrr'


Great songs from Nadeem -Shravan, these guys totally owned '90's hindi film music most of my favourite '90's tunes are from them. The soundtrack to this is a winner as well with ballads such as 'Zamaane ke dekhen hai' the breezy 'hum tere bin' the earworm worthy 'Dhin dhin tak' the sensual Tumhe apna banane and then my favourite the happy clappy and well choreographed 'rehne ko' which just makes you want to get up and do the dance moves



Total Score: 7/10 ( fast paced love story action drama (yes in that order)

Dhadkan (2000)

This film has a lot of beautiful songs which is the reason i watched it plus its one of Shilpa's most famous films so i thought i'd check it out

Dev (Sunil Shetty) a pooor man who can't even afford to change his chewed up Kolhapuri sandal is in love with wealthy Anjali (ShilpaShetty)

Dev's mother (Sharmila tagore) urges Anjali to promise her she would stick by him forever as he's known as illegitimate by society, Anjali promises her

Anjali tells her parents of her lover Dev, when he comes to meet them he doesn't even bother to make an effort plus he fails to make a good impression on her parents as he starts acting arrogantly

Anjali's father is disgusted and feels disgraced by her bringing home such a lowly guy, he arranges for her to be married to wealthy Ram (Akshay Kumar)

As Anjali is a traditional girl at heart and not wanting to disobey her parents she willingly marries Ram and of course she feels bad for betraying the promise she had made to Dev's mother

Dev is devastated and if the breakup wasn't bad enough, his mother dies leaving Dev alone in the big bad world

After their marriage Anjali refiuses to have sex with Ram, being the gentleman that he is, he agrees


(hell no what's it with this Ram, a night or two is fine but a whole month... hell no..lol)

Eventually she starts warming up to Ram and she falls deeply in love with him

Things take a turn when Dev now a millionaire comes back into her life, Dev hopes he can still make Anjali marry him

When he notices her love for Ram, Dev is jealous and he starts creating havoc in their lives

Will Anjali and Ram's marriage survive Dev's evil tactics? Will she remain faithful to Ram or will her affections shift towards Dev?

Dhadkhan (heartbeat) irritated the hell out of me, the done to death love triangle plus all the self sacrifices got on my nerves, also added to my annoyance was some Cinderellaesque type storyline with Sushma Seth as the wicked Stepmother Inlaw and Parmeet Sethi and Manjeet Kular as the wicked step sisters. Despite all the annoying things, for some reason i couldn't chuck it out of my Dvd player, i watched it all the way through as such I wouldn't describe it as an entirely awful film, but its not execeptionally good either watch it if you like Shilpa, Akshay & Sunil or if you're in need of some time filling entertainment or better still for the songs, the music of this film is probably one of the reasons it'll still be playing on my Dvd

Decent performances from all the cast but why oh why did Sunil Shetty win Best villain for this film, i've nothing against his acting in this but his role when he comes back to wreak havoc in Ram and Anjali's life can hardly be described as true villain material

Fabulous soundtrack from Nadeem-Shravan i loved all the songs here the romantic 'Dil ne yeh kaha hai' the joyful 'aksar is duniya mein' the celebratory 'Na na karte pyar' which sounds like a Chinese pop song and my favourite 'Tum Dil me Dhadkan ho'


Total Score: 5/10 ( Tired but watchable love story)