Trying To Bring Amitabh Bachchan's Era Of Heroism And Machoism With 'Marjaavan': Siddharth Malhotra

Actor Siddharth Malhotra says Marjaavaan is a throwback to the over-the-top hero-centric movies of the past that were best embodied by Amitabh Bachchan in Hum. The film, he said, will see him play a quintessential hero, who goes to great extent to fight for his love. This is very unconventional in today's day and age. Very few people are doing it and we are standing out because of that. It is a first for me. Milap Zaveri (director) has made a film in this space earlier but this one is a notch higher, Siddharth told PTI. The film, the actor said, seeks to reintroduce themes of heroism and macho man, the type of cinema he grew up watching. We are trying to bring back that era of heroism and machoism with an intense love story. It feels great to be this powerful and strong where I can beat up 10 to 20 people, break helmets, etc. It is stemming from my childhood influence and memories of movies like this, starting from Mr Amitabh Bachchan. Siddharth said he was a huge fan of Bachchan's 1991 blockbuster Hum and would often recreate some of the megastar's iconic dialogues from the film. We had cassettes of films of Bachchan sir, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Yash Chopra, and others. We had a cassette of 'Hum' and in the end, Bachchan holds a rope and says, 'Bakhtawar ...' and I thought it is a bad word and that he is abusing. I used to do the same scene in front of my friends and they would love it. That is the magic of movies that it charges up people. It's the child in me that got me excited for 'Marjaavaan'. The 34-year-old actor said Milap intentionally added over-the-top dialogues to give that quintessential dramatic feel to Marjaavaan. We consciously made a decision that it is an intense love story, it is dramatic and then Milap added his 'dialoguebaazi'. We then gave it a charm of '70s and '80s as we believe there is an audience for it and very few filmmakers cater to it. The action drama also features Riteish Deshmukh, Tara Sutaria and Rakul Preet Singh. The film, produced by T-Series and Nikkhil Advani's Emmay Entertainment, releases on November 15.