I'll Die for Mama
(Deewaar)

Born two years earlier in Zanjeer (1973), written by the duo Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar, the character of the angry young man raised Bachchan to the status of icon. It is certainly in I’ll Die for Mama, in the eye of Yash Chopra’s camera, that Bachchan (Vijay, the name reprised from Zanjeer and used numerous times) gives this figure of a solitary urban outcast rejected by destiny all his angry power. With its memorable dialogues, an epic and family narrative structure opposing two brothers, I’ll Die for Mama is a film whose popularity is still hard to match in the history of Hindi cinema. JB