Mashaal

Vinod Kumar is an honest journalist who loses his paper and his home for writing about a local criminal network. He ends up on the street. One night his wife collapses and he tries to flag down passing cars on an empty road; nobody stops. She dies there. After that, Vinod is finished with honesty. The subject is not corruption but how a principled man gives up his principles. The film does not judge him, but neither does it hide the cost; the journalist who enters the criminal world opens the same road for the boy he wanted to save. The form is mainstream Indian drama of the eighties: a wide emotional range, songs, long confrontation scenes. That night on the street became one of the most cited passages in Indian cinema and is remembered on its own in Dilip Kumar's career. Yash Chopra directs. Dilip Kumar plays the journalist, Anil Kapoor the young man he takes off the street and Amrish Puri the antagonist, with Waheeda Rehman as the wife who dies. Who it is for: viewers who like classical Indian melodrama and late Dilip Kumar. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a short, tight narrative; the film is long and deliberately raises the emotional dose in its final stretch.