Bunty Aur Babli turns 20: Abhishek Bachchan, Rani Mukerji’s crime caper is a sharp, spirited portrait of middle-class ambition in post-liberalisation India | Bollywood News
It was the early 2000s. Aditya Chopra had seen failure, and not just once; the industry had started to lose faith as well as some within his own family. He was no longer the golden boy, and that silence around him was growing heavier. Hence, he made a decision. Not to retreat, but to move and to try something unexpected. He wanted to make a crime caper, with Abhishek Bachchan in the lead. He handed the reins to a young director, known only for a remake, and gave him a story that set out to change the syntax of commercial storytelling. For Yash Raj Films, this was unfamiliar territory. It had none of the soft-focus charm of their romantic sagas. There was no moral compass pointing north. Not even NRI nostalgia to cushion the fall. At its heart, it was about thieves, beneath the ever-watchful eye of capitalism’s glimmering tower, stealing not for malice, but for meaning. Many might think this is about Dhoom, with its bikes, its pace, its swagger. That’s another story for …
