Dang, yo! Amitabh burns up the screen in Trishul! He is a one-man wrecking machine as he fulfills his oedipal Angry Young Man destiny.



Our story begins when Sanjeev Kumar ditches poor Shanti (Waheeda Rehman) for a rich bride. In a real dick move, he promises to marry her, introduces her to his mother, and then marries the boss's daughter!!! Poor Shanti! She shows up to tell him that she's pregnant but will not take a single rupee from him. She has some dignity, after all.




Fast forward a bunch of years and Sanjeev has a legitimate son (The Shash), who is a total slacker and an illegitimate son who is determined to pay him back for ditching his mother all those years ago.

Each of the men has a narrative and Amitabh is the agent of change in all three.



Through force of will alone, Amitabh manages to ruin his father's business. He succeeds because he doesn't care about money and Sanjeev very much does. The moment that got me all weepy was when Amitabh has taken everything away from Sanjeev and Sanjeev is sitting alone in the dark realizing that he's screwed. Amitabh shows up with the big pile of papers represesnting Sanjeev's entire fortune and Amitabh hands it all back over!!!!




Sanjeev ruined a woman's life for this pile of papers that can so easily be won and lost! Money is not worth selling yourself for...


(I love Hema's saree here...!)



Amitabh tries to come between Shashi and his lady friend, Hema Malini, but fails. Their feelings for each other are too genuine to be ruined by Amitabh's cynical machinations. Instead, The Shash has a crisis of family when he comes to find out that Amitabh is his half-brother and perhaps his father is not so perfect after all.




This was probably my favorite storyline. The Shash did a great job at portraying the playboy with too much time on his hands as someone who was adrift - unhappy with life but not enough to actually do anything about it. He becomes much more genuine in his behavior when he begins to think that maybe everything he has in life he has because of luck and not because he deserves it somehow.



And Mr. Bachchan... He made my socialist heart glee with all his talk of the evils of money. He succeeds in taking his father down because he doesn't care about material gain. He came from nothing and is happy to return to nothing once his mission is complete. His story is one of letting go of anger - which he does, eventually, with a little help from Rakhee, his secretary. He comes to find that revenge is a lonely country, indeed, and with a little help from Rakhee, he manages to develop family relationships with his half-brother and half-sister.




Aw! The Shash and Big B play good brothers! A family that's tied up together - stays together!

While the machinations of Amitabh were really rivoting, my viewpoint character ended up being Rakhee as Geeta The Secretary of Awesomeness. Her loyalty to both crazy geometric print sarees and her boss made me very happy!




Geeta: "I cannot be bought for money!"
Amitabh: "OMG! You must be my OTP!!!!"



Filmi Girl: *dies*



Check out this black and white number! I want one!

The 70s interiors were also extremely amazing!



Check out this wall!



And the suits! Amitabh rocks some BIG CHECKS!




Also, his swinging bachelor pad is extremely swinging!

In a nice Bollywood-style contrast to the swinging interiors, we get our TRUE LOVE IS OUTDOORS scenes. That is how we know that these kids mean business!



These are some of the only flowers we see....



Hema and The Shash spend time outdoors....



I wish Hema had a larger role; she was too adorable as the lady CEO who got Shashi all flustered with his feelings of respect and admiration!


Overall, I really enjoyed this. It had plenty of romance, dishoom-dishoom, socialist messages about money not being worth selling your soul for, feminist messages about how ladies can do stuff, AND lots of shots of Shashi and Amitabh with their shirts unbuttoned to the navel. How could you lose?!