Ratsasan-vs-Cuttputli

You might be wondering why my first article here is on films. I agree there are far better topics, and I will choose some of those topics for my later articles. At the same time, this particular article is time bound and connected to the release of a movie on OTT.

That was the first preamble. The second preamble is this. If you read reviews of movies in the press, you would find that most of the movies would be put down badly. I have hardly seen any reviewer praise a movie. I am not an artist, a cinematographer, an aspiring cameraman, an aspiring Director nor any of the myriad technologies related to filmmaking. I am a very simple person who enjoys watching movies in Hindi, Tamil, English, Telugu, and some Malayalam. As long as the movie has subtitles, I have also enjoyed some Korean, Japanese, and French movies. I root for the hero, stand by him when he fights, flirt alongside him with his girlfriend, and tap my feet when he sings a good song. I hate the villains, and I always shed a few tears for the underprivileged.

Now that is off my chest, let us get down to brass tacks. Since I understand both Hindi and Tamil very well, I have always been curious about comparing movies that have been copied, or redone (officially or unofficially) from one language to the other. Most often than not, Telugu and Tamil movies have been redone one way or the other in Hindi.

The latest is the official remake of the Tamil thriller Ratsasan into the Hindi movie – Cuttputli. Silly title and silly spelling, I must say. The storyline has nothing to do with anyone making anyone dance to their tunes, particularly the hero.

The gist of the story is quite simple. An aspiring filmmaker does years of research trying to understand the mind of psychopathic killers across the world. He wants to make one or more movies on the theme. His attempts to sell his storyline to producers are always in vain. In the meantime, since his father was a police officer who died on duty, he has been offered a position in the police. Under pressure from his family, he accepts a low-level posting in the police. When he starts his job, he comes across the killing of school girls in a small hill station. He immediately starts seeing the connection between the killings. How he works to solve and identify the killer is the guts of the story.

In Tamil, the film Ratsasan (meaning Demon) featured an actor called Vishnu Vishal. When this movie was released Vishnu was 34 years old and looked 25 in the movie. This is critical as you will understand later. Now Vishnu, though he has a few box office hits, is not the kind of actor to whose house Directors and Producers will make a beeline.

In Ratsasan, as SI Arun Kumar, Vishal looks simple, even naïve, often suppressed by family members and police seniors. He fills his room’s walls with newspaper clippings and cutouts of psychopathic serial killings. He is travelling either by bus, a two-wheeler, or his brother-in-law's beaten-down Ambassador.

As a police officer, his attempts at telling his superiors of the connections between the killings are always shouted down. Even when he manages to create some kind of credibility, he is suspended and humiliated. In particular, ACP Lakshmi is in charge of the police station to which he is attached. She is in charge of the investigation. She wants to close the case quickly and is more interested in her young daughter to whom she is speaking constantly on the phone, irrespective of what is happening around her. She even manages to get Arun arrested on some flimsy grounds to get him out of her hair. But Arun persists and solves the issue and stops the killings.

Released in 2018, Ratsasan won or was nominated for over 14 awards across, acting, editing, music, direction, etc. Ratsasan was also a reasonable box office success.

Cuttputli is nearly a scene-by-scene remake of Ratsasan. But the Director has made several mistakes that rob the movie of the story and viewability. Rather than being a thriller, Cuttputli feels more like a documentary.

At the outset, Akshay Kumar is completely unfit for the role. He is too old (claims he is 36, but certainly looks 50+), and certainly lacks the naivety and hesitancy so important for this role. Whether he is pleading with producers or trying to follow orders from his superiors, he looks impatient and seems to just wait for the cue to start his dialogues that sound more like monologues. He swaggers around and projects a look of absolute boredom on his face all the time. He orders people around, and all the other actors defer to him. Even if, in their roles, they are far above him in ranking.  

The Director, Ranjith Tiwari, has erred horribly in cutting some critical scenes from Ratsasan. There is this retired Policeman from another station who had originally arrested the villain’s mother. When Arun Kumar reaches out to him for help, he identifies an important point from the photographs  Arun had given him. He calls Arun and urges him to come and see him immediately. But, before Arun could reach him, he is killed. Now Arun knows that the retired policeman has seen some important detail, and has to identify that himself without help. This scene that adds to the thrill is chopped off in Cuttputli.

Towards the end of the movie, when Arun is suspended, his ’s fiancée's daughter is kidnapped. Desperate, he pleads with ACP Lakshmi to give him a pistol and some official status so that he can save the girl. The arrogant and myopic Lakshmi shouts him down and orders a constable to shackle Arun in the station. The constable, on the contrary, shackles the ACP, gives Arun her pistol and pleads with him to save the girl. This heartwarming human interaction where a constable risks his career to save a girl is again completely removed in Cuttputli.

The climax is also murdered beyond recognition. In Ratsasan, till the very end, the villain has an upper hand. The kidnapped young girl is frozen very near where the fight is taking place. Arun is constantly talking to himself to understand how to defeat the villain who is also a magician. You cannot have Akshay playing the second fiddle to the villain, can you? So, all the thrill of pursuit in the original movie is pared down to a few minutes where Akshay picks up the villain and throws him around like a rag doll.

In Cuttputli, the SHO Gudiya Parmar has no role, other than handing over the investigation to Arjan Sethi. Constable Ali Sourathia makes a feeble attempt to browbeat Arjan but is quickly put down by others. Even DSP Shukla is close to pleading with Arjan to take over the case and run it the way he wants. All this is for a SI who is raw and has joined the force only a few weeks before! But then the SI is Akshay Kumar.

On his part, Arjan already knows who the killer is and is not looking for help from anybody. He walks around as if he owns the police force, drives around a brand new Kia, has a couple of Mitsubishis in his cavalcade, and even flies to some European country to sing a few lines with his girlfriend. When he uses an auto to reach a crime scene, he just walks away from the auto ordering a constable to pay the auto wallah. Really? When he chases an auto that is identified, the auto wallah simple bolts after looking at Akshay Kumar, though he is dressed in civies.

In my mind, Akshay seemed to think that Cuttputli is part 2 of Suryavanshi.

One of the best review headlines I have read of Cuttputli is from Firstpost where Subash Jha calls it ‘a laughably witless remake of a good film’.

 Ratsasan was released in 2018, and Cuttputli on 02 Sep, 2022 on Disney/Hotstar.

I am looking forward to doing a similar review of the Tamil and Hindi versions of Vikram Vedha. In Tamil, the roles were beautifully played by Madhavan and Vijay Sethupathi. Let us see how Saif Ali and Hrithik portray the same roles.