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The Past Blast: When a Salim Khan flop inspired Subhash Ghai's Ram Lakhan with Jackie Shroff & Anil Kapoor
Both Ram Lakhan and Falak chronicle the tale of two sons who avenge the death of their father. Here's why Subhash Ghai decided to spin the premise of a film written by Salim Khan. Details
The 1989 Subhash Ghai directorial, Ram Lakhan, fronted by Anil Kapoor, Jackie Shroff, Madhuri Dixit and Dimple Kapadia has attained a cult status over the years in the genre. There have been attempts to remake the classic in the past, but nothing really materialised, as every actor from the younger generation wanted to play the role of notorious Lakhan. However, very few know that it was actually a flop film that inspired Subhash Ghai to make this blockbuster.
In 1988, celebrated writer Salim Khan had written a film titled Falak to be directed by Shashilal K Nair. The film featured Jackie Shroff and Shekhar Kapur as brothers, with the latter playing a cop. The story chronicles the tale of how two brothers avenge the death of their father. The writer had organised a special screening of the film for the industry at light box in Santacruz and Subhash Ghai was one of the many people who watched the film. While the film was appreciated for its power packed dialogues, the attendees unanimously criticised it for the slow pace.
Reportedly, the film was written by Salim Khan to answer the naysayers of how he wasn’t the one contributing to the dialogues of the iconic films written by the Salim-Javed duo. As a result, the dialogues stood out, but the film ended up being substandard. Subhash Ghai, who was riding on the success of films like Karz, Vidhaata, Hero and Karma among others, met Salim Khan and informed him that the film didn’t work for him. However, he was bowled over by the concept and apparently informed Salim Saab that he would soon make a much commercial version of Falak, as he felt the screenplay was pretty dull.
Cut to a year later, and he came up with Ram Lakhan where two brothers, one a cop and one on the other side of the law team up to avenge the death of their father. And well, the rest is history as the film is considered a textbook of commercial cinema in the Hindi film industry. As they say, the same story can be interpreted differently by different directors and the tale of Falak and Ram Lakhan is a prime example of how presentation can make a huge difference in the final outcome.
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