New Delhi: Rajiv Hari Om Bhatia aka Akshay Kumar has been in the film industry for more than 21 years. His first film ‘Saugandh’ released in 1991 and now, he is coming up with his 100th film ‘Joker’.
Akshay remained a typical action hero in the initial years of his film career. That was the time when two different types of films were making waves at the box office. On one hand, Shah Rukh Khan and some other heroes were trying their best to popularise the romantic films; on the other hand, the likes of Akshay, Sunil Shetty and Ajay Devgn were frequently acting in hardcore action films.
Akshay stood out among the action heroes for two reasons. He was better than others at comedy, plus he was a very good dancer. Ajay Devgn more or less had a serious hero’s image and Sunil Shetty was still undecided about what to do other than pure action sequences.
The shift to comedy via films such as ‘Suhaag’ and ‘Sabse Bada Khiladi’ opened the floodgates of opportunity for Akshay. Priyadarshan’s ‘Here Pheri’ (2000) became the film which entirely changed his image. From here on, Akshay was a better comedian than an action hero. The Hindi film industry was also going through a lot of changes during this time. Finally, when new directors and their films redefined the art of filmmaking in India, Akshay was ready as a hero with the required set of skills.
Slowly and steadily, he and Ajay Devgn got into the club of Bollywood superstars. A dedicated audience base in North India brought him at par with the popular Khan trio. His films started to do fantastic business in the first week with the help of super charged promotional drives, an art he learnt from the Khans.
Hugely successful films such as ‘Singh is Kinng’, ‘Housefull 2’ and ‘Rowdy Rathore’ have established Akshay as a money spinner, and now he is ready with ‘Joker’.
Directed by Shirish Kunder, the film is set in a village called Paglapur, which doesn’t have any mention on India’s official map. Raj Khurana (Akshay), who is an NRI, returns to his village only to find truck loads of problem.
Raj decides to fetch the media attention to his village, which will eventually help the villagers in getting rid of their problems; however the only thing which can go against his plan is the presence of aliens in the village.
Sonakshi Sinha has been paired up with Akshay Kumar in ‘Joker’. The duo are expected to repeat the magic of ‘Rowdy Rathore’.
Shirish Kunder has returned to direction after a long time, his earlier film ‘Jaan-E-Mann’ hadn’t worked well at the ticket window, so he would be hoping for a good finish this time.
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