Producer: Adlabs
Director: Ram Gopal Varma
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgan, Mohanlal, Suniel Shetty, Rajpal Yadav, Nisha Kothari, Susmita Sen, Prashant Raj
Music: Prasanna Sekhar,  Nithin Raikwar, Amar Mohile, Ganesh Hegde

Ram Gopal Verma’s most buzzed film of the season or to be precise of his entire career is his new release ‘Ramgopal Varma Ki Aag’. Hyped as the remake of Bollywood blockbuster ‘Sholay’, this film sadly stands nowhere closer to the original flick. RGV for this ambitious enterprise has managed to hook in a tableau of big shots like legendary Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgan and Mohan Lal, as well as not so established names in the industry like Prashant Raj and Nisha Kothari. Going by the director’s words, this is a film, which is inspired by ‘Sholay’, but at the same time it has its own distinctiveness too. This supposedly high-flying film has been dubbed into Telugu as ‘Aggi’. But going by its box-office response, the result isn’t very gratifying.

This is a story with a twirl and instead of being set on a rural village like its original, it snakes around the urbanized locales of Mumbai. Babban (Amitabh Bachchan) is a land shark who impinges others land without any ado. Narasimha (Mohan Lal) is a sincere cop who wants to get this crook behind the bars at all expenditure. Narasimha is well aware of Babban’s immense fondness for his brother and he decides to snitch the goon by going for his Achilles heels.

But unfortunately Babban’s brother dies at the hands of the cop and Babban is sentenced to life imprisonment. He somehow escapes and avenges for the loss of his brother by purging Narasimha’s entire family. When Narasimha tries to reach him again, he chops off his fingers. As a result of this, Narasimha is sacked from his job but he continues to fight on the righteous side.

To put an end to his evil reign, Narasimha takes the help of two ill-famous rowdies Guru (Ajay Devgan) and Raj (Prashant Raj) for a fat pay. But true to their nature, they decide to flee with the money. But later they give up when they learn about the sad past from Narasimha’s sister-in-law Devi (Susmita Sen). In the course of action, Guru falls in love with Gowri (Nisha Kothari) an auto-driver, while Raju loses his heart to Devi, a widow now. Together these two guys create havoc for Babban. To avenge their action, Babban kidnaps Gowri and the two-guys reach there for a brave confrontation with the don. In the end, Raj gets killed in the hands of Babban, while Narasimha kills Babban with the help of Guru. The film concludes with the union of Guru and Gowri. 

This film is special since it casts Big B in a negative shade for the first time. South star and RGV regular Mohan Lal’s brilliant acting stand class apart. Ajay Devgan too is stupendous in his performance and so is newcomer Prashant Raj. The actress, particularly Nisha Kothari and Urmila Matondkar add to the glamour quotient. Rest of the cast including Sushant Singh, Virender Saxena, Rasika Joshi, Sanjay Narvekar, Jeeva, Raju Mavani, Ravi Kale, J.D. Chekravarthy and Suchitra Krishnamoorthi are passable.

Technically considering, cinematography by Amit Roy is stupendous which contributes towards elevating the tempo of the film. But the screenplay gets little sloppy at times. RGV fumbles with the narration in the second half that adds to the film’s disadvantage.

The songs are catchy and groovy but poor direction along with bad choreography leads it to its distasteful fate.

This film, although loaded with stars and backed by hounding promotions, fails to leave an indelible mark at the box-office. With a bit of hamming by the stars and RGV’s equally hamming direction, this film will at least make a mark in the history as one of the biggest box-office disaster till date.