The 2012-Agneepath begins by paying glowing tributes to the 1990- Mukul Anand- Amitabh original, calling it a cult classic.

Let me confess that despite being a hardcore Amitabh-fan, the original Agneepath remains a memory that I have tried hard to suppress. After fawning over Bachchan’s every screen move in my childhood years, it was Agneepath which had finally brought me to my ‘cinematic’ senses. For me, it represented the end of an era and brought in the acute realization that my hero’s ‘Angry Yong Man’ days were over. Watching him in Agneepath was a painful experience for me. Not only was the film a rather predictable vendetta-saga, but I also just could not bring myself to applaud an old-looking, tired actor who was trying too hard to give a new twist to his tried and trusted screen image by putting surma in the eyes and mouthing dialogues in the awful Brando-esque gruff drawl. Already duds like Ganga Jamuna Saraswati, Toofan and Jaadugar had done their bit in shaking my undying belief in Bachchan’s screen persona and now this, the best male voice in the industry changing his voice! Well, that was the final straw. Not even the re-dubbed (in Amitabh’s original voice) soundtrack and the subsequent National Award could ever convince me that Agneepath was a classic and that’s how I still look at it.

So on this personal background, I was obviously not expecting much from the reprise. But this contemporary version took me completely by surprise. The new Agneepath is way better than the original and it has very little in common with the original, apart from a few central characters and the basic vendetta theme. The major credit for this transition must go to Karan Malhotra, who after spending years as the assistant director, finally gets a chance to hold the directorial reins and write the screen-play.

A village-boy sees his idealist teacher-father being tortured and killed by a ruthless villain (Sanjay Dutt). The boy and his pregnant mother (Zarina Wahab) leave their village behind and come to Mumbai. Consumed by hatred and vengeance, the boy goes astray and grows up to be the major henchman (Hrithik Roshan) in a Mafia-lord’s (Rishi Kapoor) gang. The mother disowns the wayward son and moves away with her young daughter. A sympathetic police officer (Om Puri) keeps a protective watch over the family from a distance. The only reason the boy has entered the Mafia-world is to be able challenge his father’s killer, who has now turned his village into a crime-den. With only his childhood girl-friend (Priyanka Chopra) and his chawl residents to call as his own, will he finally put an end to all the demons in his head? Or will the path of fire on which he has been walking finally also consume him in its flames?