Trade unionist, Anand Verma, defeated and disgraced by the management of his firm using his family as bait decides to desert his family. Leaving two young sons, Vijay and Ravi Verma to be take care of by his wife, Sumintra Verma. Sumintra struggles day and night to bring up her two sons. Years later the family is still struggling, while Vijay works as a porter at a dockyard, all Ravi attempts at getting a job are all in vain but he romances Veera, the daughter of a senior police officer and finally gets a police job as a Sub-Inspector. One of his first assignments is to be apprehend and arrest some of Bombay's hardcore criminals and smugglers which includes his brother, Vijay - much to his shock, as he had never associated his very own brother of having any criminal background. Ravi must now decide to proceed on with apprehending Vijay, or quit from the police force. Abandoned by her husband (Satyen Kappu), Sumitra Verma (Nirupa Roy) is saddled with two young sons, and must live on a day to day basis. Years later, the family is still struggling. Her elder son, Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) is a porter in the Bombay docks; her younger son, Ravi (Shashi Kapoor) is unemployed and romancing the Police Commissioner's only daughter, Leena Narang (Neetu Singh). On the Commissioner's suggestion, Ravi applies for employment with the police, and is sent for training. Several months later, he is accepted by the police, and has a rank of Sub-Inspector. When he returns home, he finds that Vijay has become a businessman overnight, has accumulated wealth, and a palatial home. When Ravi finds out that Vijay has acquired wealth by crime, he decides to move out alongwith his mom. Vijay must now decide to carry on with this criminal activities or join his mom and brother, and lead a honest life. One of Amitabh's finest work. The raging emotion contained just underneath his skin is kept quietly hidden from the world, with bits boiling over at key moments in the film. He also has great one-liners which became main-stays in the Indian cinema for decades afterward.<br/><br/>Shashi was a complete clown in this movie, and you have to ask yourself; what brother would take up arms against his own brother to uphold 'justice', especially in India, the land of corruption and nepotism? Still, accepting the lanky Amitabh beating up 20 goondas with scissor kicks and an old dented shovel means accepting the rest of the premise. In my eyes, however, it would have been much more realistic and cool if Shashi the cop and Amitabh the criminal joined forces to gyp everyone out of their cash, and to live out the rest of their natural lives in Hong Kong or London. It doesn't work out that way though, and Shashi betrays his brother for a 30 cent scrap of copper attached to a ribbon and called a medal.<br/><br/>The mom in the movie annoyed me big-time though, her idealistic rantings and ravings made me yawn and ask myself if any old Indian woman could be so naive and stupid. I mean, if your son bought you the building you used to drag bricks to during it's construction 20 years ago, would you throw that all away just because the son bought it with drug and smuggling money? Come on.<br/><br/>The climax scene is arguably the best ending in any Indian movie of the 70's, 80's and 90's, far surpassing Sholay's. If you get a chance, run, don't walk to watch this movie. I had for a long time heard about the most famous actor in India, possibly one of the most famous in the world, but I had never seen any of his films, so I was looking forward to seeing this Hindi language film featured in the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die book. Basically the Verma brothers Ravi (Shashi Kapoor) and Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) follow different life choices and career paths, Vijay becomes a criminal expert in smuggling and Ravi becomes a police inspector assigned to locate lawbreakers. They are the son of trade unionist Anand Verma (Satyendra Kapoor) who used his family as bait going against the management of his firm, and it resulted in being defeated and disgraced, and unable to cope with public humiliation he deserts the family. The two sons are raised by mother Sumitra Devi (Nirupa Roy) and taken to Bombay City, but as time goes by the two individually cause her, as a single mother, terrible trials and tribulations because of their choices. Vijay, the older of the brothers, has grown up aware of his father's humiliation and is victimised by those who know of it as well, he did start well in his youth as a simple boot polisher and dockland worker, but turns to a life of crime and a leading figure in the underworld. Ravi gets a good reputation for bringing law and order to the city, and his next assignment is to find a big name in the smuggling ring, he gets a terrible shock when he finds out it is his own brother, so he has no courage to arrest him and bring more shame to the family, despite his numerous opportunities. Also starring Parveen Babi as Anita, Neetu Singh as Leena Narang, Manmohan Krishna as DCP Narang, Madan Puri as Samant and Iftekhar as Mulk Raj Dhabaria. Bachchan as the young man who follows the wrong path is great at creating a both hateful and sympathetic character, and as his law abiding Kapoor does very well also, the story is just about easy to follow, a brother going bad and the other good and not stopping the law breaking due to the family bond and wanting to avoid disgrace, it is certainly a worthwhile drama. Good!
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354 weeks ago