New Delhi: Nana Patekar’s most critically acclaimed film, Parinda, released in 1989, got a Hollywood remake, Broken Horses, directed by Vidhu Vinod Chopra in 2015. He also directed the original Hindi version in 1989.
Patekar died at 75 at his Goa residence on Thursday.
The film starred Anton Yelchin, Chris Marquette, Vincent D’Onofrio, Maria Valverde, Thomas Jane and Sean Patrick Flanery.
While Parinda was loosely inspired by Marlon Brando-starrer On the Waterfront (1954), the film revolves around two orphan brothers, Kishan, played by Jackie Shroff and Karan, played by Anil Kapoor. To provide food for his family, Kishan starts working under gangster Anna Seth, played by Nana Patekar. The film collected nearly Rs 9 crore against the budget of Rs 12 lakhs.
The English remake follows the same storyline, with two orphan brothers played by Julius and Jacob Heckem, while Nana’s character Anna is played here by Vincent D’Onofrio as Julius’ henchman. But the story has some different twists. Here, the brother is a violinist in New York who is marrying his Italian girlfriend Victoria, played by Maria Valverde, while his older brother Buddy grows up in a lawless environment and becomes a key assassin for Hench. Now, both want to start a new life, but they have to escape Hench as he does not want to lose his best assassin.
“Broken Horses is an artistic triumph. Beautifully written, acted and imaged, this film wraps slowly around you like a king snake and squeezes,” James Cameron said.
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‘Film about brotherhood & family’
Chopra got the idea for the English-language version while travelling by train from New York to Boston with his longtime collaborator and writer Abhijat Joshi. They were discussing Martin Scorsese’s The Departed and its Korean original when Joshi suggested adapting Parinda for American audiences.
“We wanted to make an English film of our own movie,” Chopra told the Los Angeles Times.
Chopra said that although Broken Horses was set against the US-Mexico border, he wanted to retain the emotional core of the original.
“It’s a film about brotherhood and family. It’s a film that will bring you closer to your own family,” he said.
The film was a New York-set story, but Chopra later changed the setting to a US-Mexico border town after realising he did not know New York well enough.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)