Farz (1967) :
Brief Review -
This was the closest Bollywood film could go to the James Bond series. Farz is an official remake of the Telugu film Gudachari 116 (1967), which had become quite a rage in Telugu cinema at the time. Spy thriller wasn't a big commercial genre for Bollywood but was made commercial with the great use of super hit music and romance. Ravikant Nagaich's Farz reminded me of Sean Connery's James Bond movies like "Dr. No" (1962), "From Russia With Love" (1963), "Goldfinger" (1964), and "Thunderball" (1965). These films had become popular outside the US and UK, leading to many people adopting the James Bond kind of spy in their particular cinema industries. As we know all those tricks: Bond is busy with some girl and he is called by the boss; he is sent on a mission; he is chased at the airport but escapes smartly; then he meets his local contact from the agency; he then finds a new girl, seduces her, and then they are attacked; and finally, there is a villain with all his traps, and our super agent finds a success breaking them all. Jeetendra is seen doing all those things here in Farz. As expected, Bollywood has been better than Hollywood with music, so Farz has some super hit songs like "Hum To Tere Aashiq Hain," "Baar Baar Din Ye Aaye," and "Mast Baharon Ka Mein Aashiq," and Jeetendra looks too gorgeous in all of them. For a new trick (or somewhat old, I'd say), he falls in love with the girl whose father is his/nation's enemy. The script is very smart (thanks to the original), but falters somewhere towards the end. A dead person suddenly wakes up with a bullet in his chest and does some shooting for a while; the girl who has denied believing the agent in the previous meeting suddenly has a seductive song with him. Totally illogical. The rest of the film is much better, though, especially all those fight sequences and espionage stuff, which was new for Bollywood. Samadhi established a quality spy thriller formula in 1950, so Farz, also being a remake, can't be called pathbreaking. The very next year, we got pathbreaking Ankhe!
RATING - 6/10*
By - #samthebestest.
