Gunmaster G9

16th June 

Today Mithun Chakraborty aka Gunmaster G9 turns 72.

Did you know Mithun Chakraborty’s real name is Gouranga Chakraborty? Well, that’s right. However, he made a transition and in 1973, he graduated from the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, and started his acting career in Bengali cinema.

He entered Hindi films with bit roles in Do Anjaane , Mukti, Amardeep. 

He did movies like Mera Rakshak and Tere Pyaar Main too.

But the turning point was Suraksha in 1979 which turned Mithun into a star.  The film had him playing an agent of the CBI with a codename Gunmaster G9. He tries to expose a mysterious organization called SSO. He’s assigned by his bosses to find a missing colleague and he is joined in the mission by Jagdeep -- who provides the laughs -- and Ranjeeta, whose father was killed by the goons and she’s looking for revenge. Some of the scenes of the film were straight lifts from Sean Connery’s James Bond films and some were copied from Bruce Lee movies. It was all good campy fun. The film had the hit Mausam hai gaane ka song composed by Bappi Lahiri and sung by Bappi da himself.

The film was followed by a sequel Wardat in 1981.

Wardat was one of the first sequels ever attempted in Bollywood. Ranjeeta was replaced by Kajal Kiran and Kalpana Iyer and Shakti Kapoor played a villain named...Shakti Kapoor. The film was way ahead of its times when it came to plot possibilities. It had genetically modified locusts wreaking havoc on Indian crops, as well as citizens. Modified wheat and rice whose consumption upped your libido, babies wired to machines who would grow up to be a slave army and a hideout straight out of Egypt. Whoever thought of it all was a genius. Our hero Gunmaster G9 (Mithun Chakroborty) moonlighted as a dancer in a nightclub because CBI only pays so much. He’s a secret agent but his car had a Gunmaster G9 logo. Hmm...Lots of  action and stunts again adapted from Hollywood films later, Gunmaster and his gang managed to subdue the chief villain -- who looked like he had walked straight out of a horror film -- and his gang and saved the world yet again. Phew!

Both were directed by Ravikant Nagaich who made many more films with Mithun like Sahas, Laparwah and Tarkieb but they could not get the success of the Gunmaster G9.

Poor man’s Amitabh Bachchan, the film critics called him.

The reality is that he is Bollywood’s first dancing hero. And Bollywood’s first genuine action star.

That’s because the man could actually dance. And he could really fight. I mean, really fight like Bruce Lee did, and not the fake dishum-dishum stuff that other flabby heroes would do. And the muscles on his brawny body were just as real.

Above all he could act too..

National Award on Debut in Mrigaya is proof of that followed by two more in Tahader Katha and Swami Vivekananda.

Wishing Dada a Happy Birthday.