Apne Swepts Overseas Audiences Off Their Feet

After leaving cinegoers across India ”moist eyed” with their ”heart warming” presence in Apne, the strong bond of love and togetherness between the yesteryears’ matinee idol Dharmendra and his sons Sunny Deol and Bobby Deol has also swept overseas audiences off their feet.

Having won box office success and critical acclaim galore at home, this ode to the deep bond of love and togetherness between Dharmendra and his sons Sunny and Bobby, has rocked the box office in various overseas markets.

‘Apne’, which has yesteryears’ Bollywood idol Dharmendra team up with his sons Sunny and Bobby for the first time on the Silver screen, has drawn in huge audiences in the US, Canada and the United Kingdom, becoming the first Bollywood film featuring Dharmendra or Sunny to make a mark overseas.

Released on June 29 all over the world, ‘Apne’ made it to the top ten on the box office charts in the United Kingdom in its opening weekend, figuring on the seventh position among the top ten films.

‘Apne’, had box office earnings of 179,457 UK pounds (Rs 1.5 crore) in its opening weekend on 41 cinema screens.

‘Apne’ figured on the chart alongside Hollywood blockbusters like ‘Shrek the Third’, ‘Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer’, ‘Ocean’s Thirteen’ and ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End’.

What is further remarkable about the film’s box office performance in the UK is that ‘Apne’ had the second best per screen average of 4,377 UK pounds (Rs 3.5 lakh) among the UK top ten films, behind only ‘Shrek-The Third’ (which had a per screen average of 31,103 UK pounds).

The place in the UK top ten makes ‘Apne’ the first film featuring Dharmendra or his son Sunny to earn this distinction.

The film also attracted packed crowds in cinema halls in the United States, Canada and Australia.

In Australia the film has earnings of Rs 10 lakh in the opening weekend.

Trade sources said hundreds of fans of Dharmendra and Sunny in the Canadian city of Vancouver had to return disappointed after they failed to get a ticket to the premiere show of ‘Apne’, held on June 30.

Dharmendra was given a lifetime achievement award by DBR Entertainment while the Punjabi newspaper Quami Ekta honoured him for his contributions to the Indian cinema.

Featuring the three Deols along with Kiron Kher , Shilpa Shetty and Katrina Kaif as their leading ladies, ‘Apne’ is the story of a disgraced boxer (Dharmendra) who wants to get back his honour by making his elder son (Sunny) a boxer of international repute.

However, ultimately it is the younger son (Bobby) who steps in to fulfill his father’s dream when the elder one refuses to become a boxer.

Apne: Movie Review

Starring: Dharmendra, Sunny Deol, Bobby Deol, Shilpa Shetty, Katrina Kaif, Kirron Kher, Victor Banerjee
Directed By: Anil Sharma

They all hug each other quite often. The men hug up-front, unabashedly. The ladies creep up on the men from behind them and hold them close to their heart.

In Apne heart and craft come together to create an amazing graph. Apne is a very warm film. It exudes the comforting, heady scent of lives lived in a ruptured repose manifested in scenes that are written with the lavish and meticulous exactitude of emotions invested prudently in long-term action plans.

Yes, the narration is lengthy, sometimes tedious. What, for example, was the need for that ridiculous ‘rock’ song with one of Bobby Deol’s hands in his pocket?

The length is understandable in a film that puts forward Dharmendra, playing a Punjabi Stallone who has been diagraced in the boxing championsip, and his troubled relationship with an elder son (Sunny) who won’t box, and his younger son (Bobby) who can’t.

Caught between the ‘can’t’ and the ‘won’t’ of lives that share tears and chuckles as destiny reigns hard blows on the knuckles, this portrait of bona- fide emotions is free of naqal.

Full marks to Neeraj Pathak’s screenplay for creating a near-perfect vehicle for the trio of Punjab da Puttars who excel in shedding tears, together and apart. Papa Dharam and his two sons share another common ground. They are seem to suffer a perpetual bad- hair day.

Let not the awkward toupees and hairstyles come in the way of appreciating the deep-focussed melodrama’s undulating motions of light and shade.

Cinematographer Kabir Lal paints the frames in colours several shades deeper than life. And that’s the way it is meant to be.

Though the ladies are engagingly portrayed (Shilpa Shetty as the introverted Sunny’s exuberant wife reminds you of Kajol in Karan Johar’s Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham) this is a patriarchal story, populated with men who fight for self, family, country and morality on territory as far-ranging as the terrace of a Punjabi village, the boxing ring in New York and most importantly, the human heartland where most of life’s most ironic games are played by God and man.

Other recent films like Rahul Rawail’s Jo Bole So Nihal, Gurinder Chadha’s Bride & Prejudice and Vipul Shah’s Namaste London have gone to Punjab and then onwards on a journey to the West to take stock of the moral waste-land.

Anil Sharma gets it right, in almost every frame. The stretched-out plot takes the Deols and their elegant women and surprisingly-restrained adversaries through several continents and time zones.

Proving himself a master storyteller, Sharma never loses the threads of the plot as the characters scatter across the contients trying to restore family honour in hostile circumstances.

Yes, the narration gets excessively dramatic towards the end. But the magic of the real-life family being alchemized on screen is preserved until the very end.

Let’s stand and applaud Anil Sharma for attempting a theme so vast and dramatic showcasing two generations of Deol plunged into the vortex of a battle that takes them through several levels of emotions and revelations to arrive to a kind of liberating denouement that comes our way in the movies once in a while.

Indeed this Anil Sharma’s Gadar of the boxing ring. It takes hungering leaps into the hemisphere of the Deols’ most precious family ties. Sharma picks up threads of lingering sorrow and abiding ties to weave a tale that’s as sweet tender strong and resonant as any grandma’s tale about the simple god-fearing family which didn’t buckle under pressure.

It’s not the content as much the tightly-clenched treatment that gives the film a feeling of uncompromised ardour.

Swarming with characters and over-sentimental songs about family ties, Apne manages to hold its head high above the intrinsically treacly situation that Anil Sharma creates for the Deols.

The performances are fine as long as you aren’t looking for Brandos and Azmis in the cast. The immensely -gifted Victor Banerjee’s as the Deols’ sounding board is the odd one our specially when he materializes with prayer beads on screen to pray for Bobby’s quick recovery.

Good God!

This could have been one more mawkish attempt to bring together a family that suffers and celebrates together. Instead Apne is our own Rocky.

In fact, better. Not only are the boxing sequences first-rate, the emotions that the macho men invest into each other’s lives makes them look like giants who think big and act for the camera fearlessly.