Country and Year: India/USSR (1991)
Director: Shashi Kapoor
Starring: Amitabh Bachchan, Amrish Puri, Rishi Kapoor, Dimple Kapadia

Review By: Jeff
Rating: 3 out of 4 stars (good)

For several years, I had tried to track down a copy of Ajooba, intrigued by the prospect of watching a Bollywood movie filmed in the Soviet Union and starring the great Amitabh Bachchan as a masked superhero. However, the DVD appeared to be out of print; every Indian DVD retailer on the Internet was perpetually “out of stock” of it. Only recently was I was able to track down and purchase a copy, from Amazon UK, of all places.

Boy was it worth the effort.

Details of Ajooba’s production remain elusive (at least to me). The authoritative Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema provides almost no information about the film. Further, although the noted actor Shashi Kapoor is the only director credited on the print I saw, the IMDb lists a Soviet filmmaker, Gennadi Vasilyev, as co-director. The IMDb also claims that a Russian-language version entitled Vozvrashcheniye Bagdadskogo Vora was released in 1988 — three years prior to its Indian release!

Although I do not know what specifically led to Ajooba’s production, a Soviet-Bollywood co-production makes a lot more sense than one might think, even taking into account the close Indo-Soviet relationship during the Cold War. Believe it or not, for decades the Soviet Union was a fertile market for Bollywood product, for everything from the top-of-the line prestige productions all the way down to Disco Dancer. Indeed, Shashi’s brother, Raj Kapoor, filmed part of his epic Mera Naam Joker in the USSR two decades prior to Ajooba.

Although Ajooba combines two distinct genres (the Soviet fantasy film and the masala action cinema of Amitabh Bachchan), it does so in unexpected ways. Most surprisingly, the film does not take place in either Russia or India , but instead is a Sinbad-type adventure set in Bahristan, part of what is now Iran. Also, Ajooba entirely lacks the craftsmanship and attention to detail that were the hallmarks of Soviet fantasy films made decades earlier, such as Sadko, Viy, and Morozko. Indeed, the filmmaking in Ajooba is rather crude. Nonetheless, I had a marvelous time watching Ajooba. Despite the papier-mâché monsters, horrible blue screen effects, and ridiculous plot elements, the film absolutely works on its intended level, as a cheeky tall tale. It would be a shame to view it with derision as a “so bad it’s good” oddity.

Ajooba starts off with a coup, as the evil Prime Minister Anwar (Amrish Puri) imposes himself as the new Sultan of Bahristan, and imprisons the court magician Amir Khan. Just in case the viewer isn’t convinced that the Prime Minister is evil, he quickly establishes that his catchphrase is “Shaitan zindabad!” (”Long Live the Devil!”) The true Sultan, the Sultan’s wife, their newborn son, and Khan’s wife pregnant wife Zarina all manage to escape to disparate parts, with the help of a lion, tiger, elephant, snake, and dolphin.

The film then flash-forwards two decades, and we learn that the Sultan’s son is now a leather-clad, masked superhero named Ajooba (played by Bachchan), with a civilian alter ego named Ali and a best friend named Hassan (Rishi Kapoor). Once these characters are established, most of the film’s middle section is devoted to Ajooba’s romance with Khan’s daughter Ruksana (Dimple Kapadia) and a series of increasingly fanciful escapades and clashes between Ajooba’s forces and those of the Prime Minister, involving an invisibility potion, flying carpets, and other fun plot devices. Ajooba’s final act reunites the families of the Khan and the Sultan (who is now an amnesiac, faith-healing saint) in time to take on the Prime Minister’s “devil” — a giant, golem-like monster who looks like a 1960s Toho Studios creation.

The performances are generally good. Amitabh Bachchan is his usual charismatic self; by the late 1980s he could play this type of larger-than-life role in his sleep. The pudgy Rishi Kapoor does not register much of an impression as Ajooba’s sidekick. Amrish Puri (best known to Western audiences as the villain in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) is an over-the-top hoot as the evil Prime Minister, perhaps his second-best villainous role after his immortal turn as Mogambo in Shekhar Kapur’s Mr. India. However, for obvious reasons I doubt that “Shaitan zindabad” ever caught on, unlike “Mogambo khush hua” (”Mogambo is pleased”), Puri’s immortal catchphrase from Mr. India.

For such a long film, Ajooba is remarkably choppy (often the sign of a troubled production); the film skips over such major plot points as Ajooba’s decision to become a superhero! But narrative coherence was clearly not a priority for the filmmakers, and there is no reason for the viewer to dwell on it either, given the wealth of eccentric touches such as the dolphin who Ajooba refers to as his mother, a friendly crab monster, a fleeting instance of partial nudity in a crowd scene (which is practically, but not entirely, unheard of in a Bollywood film), and the fact that the film’s extras, who are constantly somersaulting and flipping about, appear to be mostly Russian circus performers. Suffice it to say, Ajooba is a one-of-a-kind film.

© Jeff