Ajay Devgn: Bollywood's man for all roles
If you see Kuku Kohli’s action drama Phool Aur Kaante (1991) today, you might find it unwatchable. A blockbuster at the time of its release, the film turned its hero, Ajay Devgn (then Devgan) into an overnight sensation.
As a young actor taking his first few steps in Bollywood, Devgn came across as an action hero with good dialogue delivery and the ability to hold his own in emotionally charged sequences.
The actor, in other words, was better than the film.
In the business for close to three decades thereafter, Devgn is one of the few accomplished star-actors in the Hindi film industry now. He is also among the most successful ones — and his track record reveals his consistent growth as an actor over the years.
Devgn has acted in more than 100 films of different genres, including rambunctious comedies, hardcore action flicks, gripping social dramas and romances. He has also featured in films of no specific genre, which Bollywood produces in plenty.
A man of few words off-screen, Devgn makes lesser headlines compared to his media-savvy contemporaries. He is not the kind that aspires for the limelight for non-cinematic reasons either. His fans love him the way he is — a no-nonsense, gifted actor who appears on the big screen from time to time.
During his early days, certain observers reminded their readers of his 'ordinary looks'. His fans didn't give a damn. They endorsed many of his initial releases whole-heartedly, including Lawrence D’ Souza’s Sangraam (1993), Farouq Siddique’s Vijaypath (1994), Harry Baweja’s Dilwale (1994), Kuku Kohli’s Suhaag (1994) and Baweja’s Diljale (1996).
Eager to strike a fine balance though, Devgn walked the less taken path, playing the character of a music director with a Hindu father and a Muslim mother in Mahesh Bhatt’s engrossing drama, Zakhm, in 1998. It was a complex character and Devgan did complete justice to it with a nuanced performance — one which won him his first National Film Award for Best Actor that year.
He would win his second National Film Award for Best Actor in 2002, playing the revolutionary protagonist of Rajkumar Santoshi’s eponymous film The Legend of Bhagat Singh. The film sank but Devgn and Sushant Singh as Sukhdev received near-unanimous applause for their performances.
The actor's career graph reveals his preference for copybook commercial fare as well. But he has also sprung the occasional surprise with his choices. One classic case is auteur Rituparno Ghosh’s Raincoat (2004). Inspired by O Henry’s famous short story, The Gift of the Magi, the film stars Devgn and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan as characters who loved and lost each other in the past.
Beautifully shot and directed, the sequences of Raincoat in shades of dark colours seem to unfold in a proscenium.
Playing a cash-strapped man who lost his job because of the lock-out in a jute mill he worked for, Devgn’s restrained performance manifested his subtle side as an actor, a quality we have seen on quite a few occasions.
A few years before Raincoat, he had played a man who tries to unite his wife with her lover in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s romantic drama Hum Dil Chuke Sanam (1999). Everybody appreciated his understated performance in spite of Salman Khan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s presence in author-backed roles.
The actor's career is studded with memorable performances.
In Ram Gopal Varma’s Company (2002), the second film of the director's Indian Gangster trilogy, he is brilliant as Malik, leader of an underworld outfit. In Prakash Jha’s crime drama Gangaajal (2003), he shines as an intrepid cop waging a war against social evils. In Mani Ratnam’s political film Yuva (2004), he is a student activist who wants to see students enter politics and hates the intrusion of politicians in college elections. This was another film in which he didn't have an author-backed role — but he still made an impact.
In Prakash Jha’s Aparahan (2005), he plays a misguided young man in a drama about the kidnapping trade, another of his remarkable performances.
Vishal Bhardwaj’s Omkara (2006) belonged to Saif Ali Khan in the villainous role of Langda Tyagi. Devgn, who played the title role of a baahubali (loosely, an enforcer or strongman), also delivered a pitch-perfect performance.
In Milan Luthria’s Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai (2010), he is a smuggler with a kind heart, killed by a gangster he had trusted and mentored once.
Devgan is spoken of as a serious actor, which isn't surprising. He is at his best in well-scripted dramas, regardless of whether they are solo hero or ensemble cast films. If Zakhm was a solo hero film in which he made a significant statement, Jha’s Raajneeti (2010) is among those ensemble films in which he played one of the important characters, and delivered a remarkably strong performance.
The actor has also wandered towards OTT comedies from time to time. His comic timing isn't the best of his generation, which includes names like Govinda, Aamir Khan, Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar — but what he can do is let his hair down and make the viewer laugh, a quality seen in the Rohit Shetty-helmed Golmaal franchise. The series has had four releases so far: Golmaal: Fun Unlimited (2006), Golmaal Returns (2008), Golmaal 3 (2010) and after several years, Golmaal Again (2017).
Bol Bachchan (2012), another Shetty directorial, tickled the viewer’s funny bone without being a universal favourite with critics. Now, trashed by most critics, Indra Kumar’s dim-witted adventure comedy, Total Dhamaal, is his latest ensemble cast film. Regardless of whether the critics have enjoyed his comedies though, Devgn has usually delivered what is expected of him with trademark efficiency. His efforts may not have been award-worthy, but they have contributed to his reliability as a star-actor.
The actor’s association with Shetty also led to two action-packed eponymous Singham films – Singham (2011) and Singham Returns (2014). In both, Devgn reprises the 'angry young cop' trope earlier essayed to perfection by superstar Amitabh Bachchan. As the hot-headed and principled Marathi cop Bajirao Singham, who takes on powerful villains in both films, he testified to his effectiveness as the central character, powering these movies to huge box office success.
He even showed up as Singham in a special appearance in the Shetty-directed Ranveer Singh starrer Simmba — a role greeted with loud cheers inside theatres across the country.
Ajay Devgn has scripted his success story unobtrusively.
He could have easily been a convincing action hero who can lip-synch and dance a bit, but he has preferred diversity over repetitiveness throughout his career.
His filmography has several noteworthy landmarks across all genres, which cannot be said about many of his contemporaries.
There will come a time when he will sit back and reflect on his films — and that should make him a fairly happy man.