Was Amrish Puri the most dangerous villain in Bollywood?

 I believe the biggest injustice done to the Hindi Film industry was to categorise Amrish Puri as Villain. He was as good (or even better) in positive roles and did fair number of parallel cinema films that many people overlook. I would anyday prefer the Amrish Puri of Nishant, Bhumika, Aakrosh, Party, Suraj ka Saatvan Ghoda, Gardish, Virasat etc. where you see Amrish Puri the actor not merely as a stereotypical villain.

There were Bob Christo, Manik Irani, Prem Chopra and Ranjeet type of actors who were limited actors and therefore they can't go much beyond the typical villain roles.

Then there were Pran, Amrish Puri, Danny Dengzongpa level of actors who were terrific actors who could play any role perfectly. So these actors were great villains not because they looked menacing or they could sound ruthless but because they were terrific actors and could play well even the most ridiculous roles. Any other actor would have made a caricature out of Mogambo and Indiana Jones roles but Amrish Puri was able to pull it off.

Amrish Puri had a terrific voice and brilliant screen presence which made him intimidating. Add to that his acting skills he was a lethal actor.

Has Sunny Deol ever done a villain role?

 Yes he has played negative or anti hero role but those films have not fared very well.

Fox (2009)

Fox was a suspense thriller made in 2009 starring Sunny Deol, Vidya Malwade, Arjun Rampal etc. The film was a critical and commercial failure. Sunny Deol played the main culprit in the film who tried to frame Arjun Rampal in a m***er case for revenge. The film was a major critical and commercial disaster.

Right ya Wrong

A delayed film starring Sunny Deol and Irrfan Khan. Sunny Deol plays a police officer who m***ers his wife and his brother for cheating and then passes it off as an accident. Sunny Deol is not the villain but this was a grey role where Irrfan plays the honest inspector and dear friend of Sunny who tries to prove that Sunny Deol is lying. The film is watchable for Irrfan Khan’s brilliant performance. Rest all in the film including Sunny Deol’s performance is passable.

Arjun Pandit

Again not a villain but anti hero. Sunny Deol plays a pandit who is unable to give the correct testimony upon witnessing a crime. Years later, Juhi Chawla frames him as a revenge for his weakness. Sunny Deol ends up in jail where he decides to take his revenge by turning into a Don and torments Juhi Chawla only for both of them to reconcile in the end.

Was Amrish Puri the most dangerous villain in Bollywood?

He looked scary

Very few villains have looked fearsome on their own

Many have had to use exaggerated expressions to appear evil (Nambiar , famous South Indian villain for instance)

Others have needed to use a false gruff voice, costumes and menacing make up (Gulshan Grover for instance )

Even as a young man , there was something SCARY about his appearance that appealed to most directors

His natural voice had the baritone that added to the menace

To the best of my knowledge - only this guy from Thudarum managed to deliver so much menace naturally by just being there

---

Lead Actors marked him out

Most Actors WANTED HIM as the bad guy

Many Directors would FIRST TAKE PURI SAHABS DATES and then go for the Actors dates

For Ajooba , Shashi Kapoor and Bachchan personally visited Puris house and offered him ₹20 Lakh for acting as a villain and managed to extract 24 days for his scenes

He was similar to Goundamani & Senthil in Tamil except they were comedians and their dates were always sought after first

He demolished the careers of several villains like Prem Chopra or Ajit who had to move to positive roles to survive

Very rarely has Bollywood had such a man who simply looked menacing and had a menacing voice and was also a brilliant actor

Puri was the entire package

Lee Van Cleef of Hollywood is another who was menacing to look at, whose voice implied Villain and who rarely played good guy

What are some Tamil movies that are worth watching just for the villain?

 I am going to get the obvious one out of the way. Lets face it, we watched Thani Oruvan just for this guy. He is the one who brought people to theaters, he is the one who kept them there.

My all time favorite villain was Kalabhavan Mani in ‘Kuthu’ , the Tamil remake of VV Vinayak’s ‘Dil’. The funny thing about this was, Mani who was the villain turned out to be the the savior of this film while Simbhu who played the yawn-worthy hero actually did more damage to the movie. Sheesh. Mani was taken from us too soon. Watching this now is harder than it used to be earlier.

One of the most iconic Tamil villains of all time should be Vijay Sethupathy’s Vedha in the surprise blockbuster Vikram Vedha. Everything about this role was done to perfection. His younger self, his ruthlessness, dark humor and his swagger - everything was on point.

While his unusual mannerism and voice modulations were nothing new to Telugu audiences, Tamils were in for a pleasant surprise when Kota Srinivasa Rao donned the role of Perumal Pichai in Hari’s ‘Saamy’. The role brought so much character and interest to the film making it the momerable masala movie that we now know it as.

While everyone liked his role in Mahanadi, cementing him as the most cunning of all villains in the 90s, I loved VMC Hanifa’s role in Pattiyal. The very aspect of him being a traitor out-foxing pretty much everyone in the film leading to that climax made me love the depth he could bring to a role even when he underplayed it.

One could argue that he was technically not the villain in this film. But without Yog Japee’s Brahmma - Soodhu Kavvum would have just been another attempt at a dark humour film. Instead his mute portrayal of a psychotic policeman took the offbeat film to top ten lists everywhere.

Bobby Simha has come under a lot of flak for imitating Rajni in recent times. But turning the clock back to 2014, he was the life of Karthik Subburaj’s dream project Jigarthanda. The film was placed squarely on his shoulders with the meaty role of Assault sethu. Simha set the screen on fire with one of the best villain performances of the decade. The fact that this role should have gone to Vijay Sethupathy makes it even more awesome.

Once again, while Kannada audiences know pretty damn well that Kichcha Sudeepa is capable of awesomeness, Tamil audiences were blown away when they walked into a bland-sounding movie about a housefly directed by someone named SS Rajamouli, who was apparently(!) popular in Telugu. What they got was an unforgettable action entertainer with possibly Rajamouli’s most detailed screenplay ever. The entire film was just Sudeep steam-rolling through one of the best performances of his career.

What do you get when you take a role based on Veerapan, lace with ample masala, venomous dialogue and cast Mansura Ali Khan in it? You get a career-defining performance and a Vijayakanth-Selvamani movie for the ages. If you wanted to give nightmares to kids back in the 90s, you didn’t tell them about the boogeyman, you spoke about this dude.

I am taking one more slot for my love of Mani. While ‘Vel’ proved to be nothing more than another Hari-flavoured masala ride. Mani once again took the role of his villainy to next level mixing it with fiery dialogues, comedy and eccentricity. Esp the sequence that I have pasted the below pic from had me rolling on the floor. Man I miss this guy.

One of the most stylish portrayals of villainy came unsurprisingly from Mani Ratnam in this cult classic Thiruda Thiruda. Salim Ghouse’s TT Vikram was a villain on whom many other international Tamil villains were then modeled after. His performance and the importance that was given to the role by Mani made me feel like I was watching some Desi hollywood movie. The film wasn’t received well when it released, but has gone on to become a re-watch worthy entertainer thanks to Rahman and SPB. Yes SPB.

There is no way I am writing an answer without the mention of Raghuvaran’s role in Baasha. In a film that simply refuses to leave our memory and lists, a film that is a peak for Rajni himself - the role of Antony almost over-shadowed everything else. That speaks volumes about how cool this role was. The moment this film hit the screens, the benchmark for villainy in Tamil cinema went many notches higher. Unforgettable role from an unforgettable actor.

And lets end it on that high!

Who will be the competitive actor for Raghuvaran in this generation for a villain role?

 

Raghuvaran was a fantastic character actor who sadly became stereotyped as a Villian for most of his career and later as a Supporting Actor

Think of him as a more talented version of Mohnish Behl in Bollywood

Why he was such a good villain was because of his LOW VOICE that was far more menacing than the usual bunch of bad guys who yelled, screamed or gave caricature like expressions like Nambiar or Senthamarai

Once he was typecast, he was rarely given a lead role unless it was a non commercial film

He rarely acted for the paycheck. He had a prosperous textile business in Kovai area or at least his family did.

---

So we need someone who is

• Good Looking
• Menacing
• Low voiced and not a caricature buffoon comedian like Radharavi or Ponnambalam or Manivannan
• Can actually have the audience impress upon him like Mark Anthony or Neelambari

Fahad Fazil is one name i can think of

Maybe more popular than Raghuvaran

Yet if Raghuvaran wasn't stereotyped and if he had made wiser choices, he would have been where Fahad is today

Irrfan Khan is another

Can blend in as an effortless silent menacing villain

Tabu can be seen as a female version of Raghuvaran

She can be a menacing bad character like in Drishyam (Not Bad but still..) where she acts far more subtly to Asha Sarath with her wide eyes and a bit of over acting (Though very apt for that role)

Prasanna is the GO TO EQUIVALENT of Raghuvaran in today's industry if you need a subtle villain

In all of South India actually

He is in huge demand because unlike Fahad Or VJS who are reluctant to play bad guy, Prasanna is fine with it

Samuthirakani can play a restrained villian but also plays loud mouthed hammy villains from time to time

He too is equivalent to Raghuvaran, a fine character actor who plays villain from time to time

Luckily not stereotyped

What elements of Suniel Shetty's performance in "Dhadkan" earned him the Filmfare best Villain award, and how does it differ from his other roles?

 In the film Dhadkan which was released in 2000, Suniel Shetty portrayed the role of Dev Chopra, a stubborn with rough and tough attitude. He wants to get back his girl friend Anjali (Shilpa Shetty) even after her marriage with Ram Verma (Akshay Kumar).

To gain Anjali back, Dev collects enough wealth as her father, a wealthy person rejected to give her daughter's hand to him though she wanted to marry him because Dev was a poor person, he doesn't know who is his father and Anjali’s father didn't like his attitude or behaviour also.

Suniel Shetty‘s Dev’s character in Dhadkan was a tough one, he forces Anjali to leave her husband and to come back with him, when she rejects him for the second time he couldn't sustain and he tries to ruin Ram's life.

But when he sees unconditional love of Ram towards Anjali, Dev changes his mind and he accepts to marry his business partner Sheetal Verma (Mahima Choudhary) who loves him very much. Finally the film gets happy ending.

Before the film Dhadkan, Suniel Shetty was usually doing hero roles and supporting roles that too as an action hero he gave good performances in several films like Mohra, Border, Gopi Kishen and Rakshak. In Hera Pheri he did a comedy role but for the first time he did villain role in Dhadkan, it was a new experience for the audience to see Suniel Shetty in that get-up. But he did the role of Dev impressively and effortlessly, he was well suited for that role and he won his first Filmfare Award though he was nominated earlier for Filmfare Best Supporting Actor for the films Dilwale and Border.

After Dhadkan Suniel Shetty portrayed negative roles in several films such as Khel in 2003, Baaz in 2003, Main Hoon Na in 2004, Rudraksh in 2004, No Problem in 2010 and A Gentleman in 2017. But his role in Dhadkan got much popularised and brought him Filmfare Award for Best Villain and this is the only Filmfare Award he won so far.

Suniel Shetty doesn't consider his Dev’s role in Dhadkan is fully a negative role because in the film he is a true lover and he struggles to get back his love at any cost and later compromises for the good of his lover.

Ranjeet the villain of Indian cinema

 The villain Ranjit, who plays the role of a buyer in the film, is very naughty in real life, he has a lot of fun with his daughter,

His daughter is very innocent and beautiful, Ranjit's daughter's name is Divyanka Bedi

A well-known villain of Indian cinema, Ranjeet started his career in the 1970s with his debut film 'Sawan Bhadon', he played the villain in many successful films like 'Sharmili' and 'Namak Halal', and worked in more than 200 films.

Divyanka Bedi is a fashion and jewellery designer and is quite active on social media, however, she has made her career away from films in the field of jewellery designing and fitness.

Hot photo best