Saif Ali Khan couldn't become Bollywood's 4th Khan. And we are happy about that
He deserves full marks for doing things differently.
Sacred Games, the Netflix crime drama series, has a remarkable sequence. Two men are sitting by the seashore. One of them is a Sikh cop, Inspector Sartaj Singh (Saif Ali Khan). The other person is his loyal junior colleague, Constable Katekar (Jitendra Joshi).
As they enjoy a few moments of tranquility, Singh starts wondering where so much ‘kachra’ (garbage) comes from. Clearing up makes no difference, he says, because the sea deposits a thousand kilograms of garbage on the shore every day.
Drawing a parallel with crime, Singh adds that the police nab wrongdoers every day and go back home. But crime inevitably returns the very next day.
Singh is an overweight, frustrated Sikh policeman. As Sacred Games progresses, his story becomes increasingly complex.
That Saif Ali Khan has played the character with restraint and sensitivity is an important reason why the web series is consistently watchable.
One of the most versatile star-actors in the business, Saif has now signed up to play the antagonist in Om Raut’s 17th century period drama, Taanaji: The Unsung Warrior. The film stars Ajay Devgn as Tanaji Malusare, a Marathi military leader and trusted commander of Shivaji.
Saif is reportedly playing Udaybhan Rathod, the Rajput fort keeper in charge of the Sinhagad fort (then known as Kondhana fort) on the outskirts of Pune, which was under Mughal control. The Maratha army captured the fort after a fierce battle, but Tanaji succumbed to injuries.
Apart from the period film, for which preparations have reportedly started, Saif will be seen in Navdeep Singh’s Hunter, a revenge drama in which he is playing a Naga sadhu. He has been photographed with a long beard, kohl-rimmed eyes and artificial dreadlocks, which has given rise to considerable curiosity,
The actor hasn't experienced box office success in recent times. However, he must be reasonably happy because of Sacred Games and a couple of recent films.
He was outstanding as an unscrupulous Gujarati tycoon, who made his millions by buying and selling shares, in Gauravv K Chawla’s Baazaar (2018). In Akshat Verma’s freewheeling film Kaalakandi, also released in 2018, he played a terminally ill man diagnosed with stomach cancer, who sets out to explore life as he has never done before.
Baazaar capsized and so did Kaalakaandi. But Saif’s nuanced performances showed that the actor in him had shed the baggage of stardom.
When one takes a look at his filmography, it is difficult to imagine that he had floundered for several years after his debut in Yash Chopra’s multi-starrer drama, Parampara, in 1993. Completely ignored by the audiences, the film was a terrible start to his career.
A typical Saif hit of the 1990s was Sameer Malkan’s Main Khiladi Tu Anari (1994), the second film of the ‘Khiladi’ series, whose success was rightly attributed to Akshay Kumar, who played a macho cop in the film. Saif played a film star, wearing outlandish outfits and speaking his lines with little self-belief. He danced with his love interest (Rageshwari) and lip-synched to Paas Woh Aane Lagey Zara Zara, which hit all the right notes with the audiences. Such moments were few and far between though, and he continued to be a risky investment for a long time.
Just when it seemed that he would fall off the map, fate smiled at him.
In 1999, the actor tasted success with Milan Luthria’s action drama Kachche Dhaage and Sooraj Barjatya’s ensemble-cast driven family drama, Hum Saath Saath Hain. His performance as a self-centred playboy in Kundan Shah’s surprise hit Kya Kehna (2000) was noticed, but forecasters of gloom would have still said that he was destined to have an unspectacular career.
Then, something happened. Thirty at the time of release, Saif mutated into an uber-cool young man from Mumbai in debutant director Farhan Akhtar’s coming-of-age drama, Dil Chahta Hai (2001).
The story of three male friends co-starred the formidable Aamir Khan and the immensely talented Akshaye Khanna. Saif played Sameer, a mischievous emotional fool with a cute sense of humour. It was not an author-backed role, but he was brilliant in the sequences written for him.
This writer absolutely loves a sequence in which a depressed Sameer is sharing the story of how he was duped by a tourist named Christine during a beachside holiday in Goa. He is sitting on a bed with his hands wrapped around his legs and an 'I-have-been-cheated' look on his face. His friends are amused when they hear how Christine, whom he had fallen for, turned out to be a crook and robbed him. Sameer’s strange sob story was both fun-inducing and believable. Saif, the actor, evoked a great response from viewers by playing the character with an easy spontaneity.
Soon, it was clear that he was supremely comfortable playing variants of a character that was urban, laidback and funny. This individual was nattily dressed, he dated and pubbed in Mumbai’s upscale Bandra or Worli, and probably owned an imported luxury car.
The actor did not have to push himself while playing characters cast in a similar mould, which resulted in convincing performances.
In Nikkhil Advani’s Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003), he played a Gujarati man living in New York City who falls in love with his close friend, who, in turn, falls for a terminally ill patient. He played a city slicker once again in Kunal Kohli’s comedy of coincidences, Hum Tum (2004) where he is a cartoonist leading a footloose, fancy-free life. Destiny plots his encounters with the same woman on several occasions — and in rather unusual situations. The two of them become friends — and fall in love.
In Siddharth Anand’s Salaam Namaste (2005), a modern-day take on romance, he is a chef living and working in Melbourne. He meets a bubbly radio jockey, the two of them become good friends and move in together shortly after.
Had he confined himself to such roles, he would have been branded as yet another star reluctant to step outside his comfort zone. Never a part of Bollywood’s elite group of stars led by the three big Khans (Aamir, Salman, Shah Rukh), followed by Akshay Kumar, Hrithik Roshan and Ajay Devgn, he instead pursued exciting career goals.
He has worked in several off-beat films while featuring in standard big-budget extravaganzas such as Race (2008) and Race 2 (2013).
Every actor is on the lookout for that one special role that makes him work extra hard — and is remembered forever. Saif was lucky to get the role of Ishwar ‘Langda’ Tyagi in Omkara (2006), Vishal Bhardwaj’s reimagining of William Shakespeare’s Othello. It was a character Aamir Khan had reportedly wanted to play. When things did not work out, Saif got the job.
Playing Langda Tyagi, Bhardwaj’s ruralised Indian version of the cunning and malicious Iago, couldn’t have been easy. The actor was marvellous as the man with a limp, has a rustic accent, hurls around four-letter words and has vengeance in his mind. It was an author-backed role and he did complete justice to it, eclipsing Devgn’s Omkara, the titular character based on Othello.
Even though Langda Tyagi is the high point of his career, Saif has played such a diverse set of characters that he cannot be blamed for not trying.
He excelled as the crafty villain in Sriram Raghavan’s Ek Hasina Thi (2004), who must pay for his sin of making a working woman in love with him suffer as she does.
Pradeep Sarkar’s Parineeta (2005) has him in the role of Shekhar, a young man who has been friends with a girl since childhood and is passionate about music. Here, too, he left a mark.
He took a big step forward and acted in Homi Adajania’s Being Cyrus (2006), a delightfully original thriller in English. Seen as an amiable fellow with a sinister side, his dialogue delivery and body language was pitch-perfect in this very unusual film.
He played a prince who resents customs and lives in London in Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s visual spectacle, Eklavya: The Royal Guard (2007). He gets to know an uneasy truth about his parentage on his return. Although the film belonged to Amitabh Bachchan, Saif underplayed his character as he should have.
An untiring seeker of diversity, he was seen in a double role in Imtiaz Ali’s Love Aaj Kal (2009). One of the characters is a modern-day yuppie, and the other, a young Sikh man from the past. He was good as both in a likeable film.
He was impressive as a professor, who is also a wanted terrorist, in Rensil D’ Souza’s thriller Kurbaan that also released in 2009.
Raghavan’s Agent Vinod (2012), a spy thriller, suffered because of a flawed script. As a globe-trotting RAW agent, however, Saif was suitably good.
The actor has made several bad decisions in recent years. Acting in Sajid Khan’s disastrous comedy, Humshakals (2014), was one of them. Signing on the dotted line for Raja Krishna Menon’s Chef (2017) was another error of judgement.
Vishal Bhardwaj’s ambitious wartime drama Rangoon (2017) did not produce the desired result either. His character of a former action film star, who loses an arm while performing stunts and becomes a film entrepreneur, was the outcome of fairly ordinary writing.
Saif’s career has had its share of ups and downs. But he deserves full marks for doing things differently.
That cannot be said about many other stars who play themselves in film after film, with the hope that their audiences will never get tired of the same.