10 Bollywood movies that openly addressed the issue of corruption
Last updated on - Feb 5, 2018, 17:25 ISTShare fbsharetwsharepinshare
01/1110 Bollywood movies that openly addressed the issue of corruption
Films are the biggest medium to express or convey a message to the audience. It is the greatest medium to reach out to the people. After the evolution of cinema filmmakers have started taking social cause issues and real-life events fighting against corruption. As corruption is one of the controversial topics in the country and it is talked about as well everywhere. As everyone wants a nation free of corruption. News like black money and scams should be removed from the country; no one would like to hear such news. Hence Bollywood takes a step forward and talks about fighting corruption and making the place a better country. These movies give us hope and motivate us to fight corruption. So here are 10 films which fought against corruption.
02/11Gabbar Is Back
The Akshay Kumar and Shruti Haasan starrer film talk about malpractices of the medical professionals and others politicians along with the different arms of administration involved in it. The police get information that 10 tehsildars across Maharashtra have been mysteriously kidnapped. But they are mysteriously returned – except the most corrupt officer, who is hanged in public. The police get a CD from mystery man 'Gabbar' who says his mission is to target corrupt officers. Police driver Sadhuram (Sunil Grover) is convinced that he can crack the mystery of who is Gabbar – but his superior officers humiliate and insult him in front of all the other officers. On his way home, Professor Aditya Singh Rajput (Akshay Kumar) is stopped by lawyer Shruti (Shruti Haasan), who makes him drive her and a pregnant woman to the hospital, but the woman delivers in the car with Shruti's help. When Shruti wants to thank Aditya for helping her, she finds he has already left. Sadhuram finds from the tehsil to the district offices that there's one honest officer in each department. He is convinced that all these honest officers have a link to Gabbar. Aditya goes to the police to hand himself over for the murders. He is given the death penalty but there are huge public protests and enraged students block his jail van. Officer Pahwa requests him to speak to the students and he does, telling them to channel their anger against corruption and be the change society needs. As Aditya is taken to be hanged, Shruti breaks down, but he leaves, smiling, asking the hangman, Tera kya hoga, Kaalia- quoting the famous dialogue of the character Gabbar from the film 'Sholay.'
03/11An Insignificant Man
The film is an Indian socio-political documentary co-produced and directed by Khushboo Ranka and Vinay Shukla and also co-produced by filmmaker Anand Gandhi and is about the rise of anti-corruption protests in India and the formation and rise to power of the Aam Aadmi Party. The makers of "An Insignificant Man" posted a 'plea' on their film site, making a case for the importance of their documentary, stating, "When we began shooting, nobody knew what lay in the future. Least of all, us. Today, we feel, we have a film that is a critical document, observing not just the evolution of a political party, but the gradual shift that we are beginning to witness in our political discourse. In the last year, we have been helped by friends who moved cities and jobs to work on this film and by colleagues who brought in their own resources. We managed to win the prestigious IDFA Bertha Grant for documentaries. We now come to you. Your support will enable us to make a better quality film in lesser time. It will also ensure that nothing can stop this film from reaching you. Please be a part of this conversation, and help us take it further. We have a host of exciting incentives too, do check them out on our page. We finished shooting a few months ago and now we need your help to take our film through post-production." The film's site explains, "What is unique in the Indian story is that some of the protesters decided to form a political party and fight state-wide elections in New Delhi. This is the story of the Aam Aadmi Party or the Common Man’s Party. "An Insignificant Man" aims to chronicle the journey of the party from its formation in December 2012 to the Delhi state elections in December 2013."
04/11Gangaajal
The film stars Ajay Devgan, Gracy Singh, and Mukesh Tiwari. The film begins with SP Amit Kumar (Ajay Devgan) taking charge of the fictitious Tezpur District (West Champaran) in Bihar. The area is notorious for its crime rate, with Tezpur Police under the control of the local don Sadhu Yadav (Mohan Joshi) and his son Sundar Yadav (Yashpal Sharma). Amit tries to instill honesty and courage in his subordinates, but in vain. Bacha Yadav (Mukesh Tiwari), who is a stooge of Sadhu Yadav visits his hideout, sees an infamous local goon Nunwa taking shelter there. Fearing that arresting him would open the lid on the nexus between Nunwa and the Tezpur Police, he kills Nunwa and misleads Police that he was killed in an encounter. Suspicious about the encounter, Amit Kumar summons Bacha Yadav, puts him off duty temporarily and also tries to keep him away from Sadhu Yadav and Sundar Yadav. Anxious that he would be transferred from Tezpur, Bacha Yadav, seeking the help of Sadhu Yadav, visits his home, where he finds out that he is being ditched by Sadhu and vows to settle the score with them. However, locals stop Amit and demand that both be killed then and there itself, before being convinced by him that they would be tried as per the law. On the way to Police Station, however, both Sadhu and Sundar escape. Amit then catches up with them and the brief fight takes place between them and the film ends with both Sundar and Sadhu getting killed by falling accidentally on chisels of a plow, which incidentally pierce through their eyes.
05/11Halla Bol
The film stars Ajay Devgan and Vidya Balan in lead roles and a number of celebrities from the Hindi film industry appear as themselves. The film touches upon the Jessica Lall murder case, Aamir Khan's involvement with the Narmada Bachao Andolan, the Right to Information Act, and public participation in fighting corruption. It also references the theatre group Jan Natya Manch, whose leader, theatre activist Safdar Hashmi, was killed by political rivals while performing a street play by the same name, Halla Bol!, in 1989. Ashfaque (Ajay Devgn) is a small town boy aspiring to be a film star in the Hindi film industry. He joins a street theatre group run by a reformed dacoit Sidhu (Pankaj Kapoor), who uses street theatre as a medium to bring about an awakening in the masses. Ashfaque struggles to give a creative vent to the actor in him in order to realise his dreams. Ashfaque's determined struggle pays off and he gets a break in films. He gets a new screen name – Sameer Khan. With the passage of time, he moves up the success ladder in a very short time. Soon, he becomes Sameer Khan the superstar. Amidst all the adulation and applause, he slowly loses his own identity. He forgets his real self and imbibes all characteristics of the various roles played by him on screen. Corruption overtakes his entire system, alienating him from all loved ones, including his wife Sneha (Vidya Balan).
06/11Satyagraha
The film stars Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgn, Kareena Kapoor, Amrita Rao, Arjun Rampal, Manoj Bajpai, Mitalee Jagtap Varadkar, Jagat Singh and Vipin Sharma in the lead roles. Retired teacher and ex-principal Dwarka Anand (Amitabh Bachchan) is an idealistic man who lives with his engineer son Akhilesh, wife, and daughter-in-law Sumitra. His engineer son Akhilesh's friend Manav (Ajay Devgan) is an ambitious capitalist. Manav cherishes his friend Akhilesh (Indraneil Sengupta) who suddenly dies in a road accident maliciously conducted by Sangram Singh, brother of India's minister Minister Balram Singh (Manoj Bajpai), who, unknown to all of India, is the mastermind behind Akhilesh's murder. Balram Singh announces compensation, which Akhilesh's wife Sumitra (Amrita Rao) cannot get in spite of submitting daily applications in the government office. Incensed, Dwarka slaps the DM and is imprisoned. Manav starts a campaign to free him, using social media, roping in Arjun Singh (Arjun Rampal) and journalist Yasmin (Kareena Kapoor). As hopeful students, hungry laborers and angry middle-class citizens join in the agitation, politicians start panicking. Eventually, Dwarka Anand gets freedom after the DM takes his complaint back to pressure from Balram Singh. His henchman shoots Dwarka Anand who dies in Manav's lap, requesting the public to stop the riots. Balram Singh is then caught by the police. Manav and Arjun decide to construct a regional party to eliminate corruption and reconstruct the system for the common welfare.
07/11Nayak: The Real Hero
Anil Kapoor who becomes a Minister for a day changes the whole scenario of the city. One of the best film which fought against corruption. Riots and violence cause deaths and destruction in Mumbai city but the Chief Minister Balraj Chauhan (Amrish Puri) because of some political motive, does not take any preventive step. TV reporter Shivaji Rao (Anil Kapoor) in a telly interview of Chauhan publicly brings to light the CM's disregard towards the elimination of the recent violence and his total failure as a CM working for the growth and development of the state. Chauhan, just to stick up for his political image, says to Rao snapping his fingers, "Sirf ek din... sirf ek din ke liye CM bannke dikhaao", (Become the CM just for a day), something that later became a popular and theoretical political concept in India where edification in political and social arena is a crying need. Rao accepts Chauhan's challenge and emerges as an efficient CM wiping out various socio-economic problems of the state and dismissing the corrupt government employees. Rao's beloved is played by Rani Mukherjee. n the end, the city develops under the governance of Shivaji Rao and his colleagues. The complaint box, where people were supposed to fill in their complaints and information about various threats anonymously, is shown to be empty, signifying that the reasons to be afraid have been taken care of.
08/11Rang De Basanti
This film shows how youth fought against corruption. The story is about a British documentary filmmaker who is determined to make a film on Indian freedom fighters based on diary entries by her grandfather, a former officer of the Indian Imperial Police. Upon arriving in India, she asks a group of five young men to act in her film. A young, struggling British filmmaker Sue McKinley (Alice Patten) comes across the diary of her grandfather, Mr. McKinley (Steven Mackintosh), who served as a jailer in the Imperial Police during the Indian independence movement. Through the diary, she learns about the story of five freedom fighters who were active in the movement: Chandrasekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh, Shivaram Rajguru, Ashfaqulla Khan, and Ram Prasad Bismil. McKinley, in his diary, states that she had met two type of people in his life, those who died without uttering a sound and those who died with lots of anguish, crying over their deaths. McKinley reveals that it was then that she met with the third kind those who die with a smile on their face. The film comes to an end with Sue describing the impact of the boys on her life. As she and Sonia watch from the rooftop that Ajay proposed to her on, they have a vision of the boys running in the fields, singing happily and victoriously throwing their shirts in the air, acting as if they are celebrating life itself, as if the ebb of their once-there vitality still reverberates in the places where they once used to go, and a wave of melancholy comes over the two surviving women. In an afterlife-like state, the boys watch as a father tells his son (a young Bhagat Singh) about gardening. They watch over him with smiling faces, then depart as friends for eternity.
09/11Shool
The film portrays the politician-criminal nexus and the criminalization of politics in the Indian state of Bihar, and its effect on the life of an honest police officer. The film starred Manoj Bajpayee as Inspector Samar Pratap Singh and Sayaji Shinde as the borderline psychopath criminal-politician Bachhu Yadav, a character loosely based on politician turned criminal, Mohammad Shahabuddin. The film opens with a late-night telephone call from Patna asking to speak to Bachchu Yadav (Sayaji Shinde), an MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly) of the ruling political party in Bihar. Bachchu Yadav' lackeys trace their boss to a prostitute's abode, where he receives the telephone and is informed that his party has selected another MLA for the ticket this time. Yadav wastes no time, reaches the newly selected MLA candidate's home and pressurises him to give up his nomination in lieu of money. When intimidation fails, Yadav's thugs stabbed the MLA-candidate under Yadav's supervision. When his deadliest cohort, Sudhir Vinod, stabs him in right-side of the chest, Yadav rebukes him for this "mistake" and stabs the half-dead man himself on the left, jokingly reminding him that heart is on the left side, by enacting Madhuri Dixit's famous Bollywood song, "Dhak Dhak Karne Laga". Singh, having lost the woman he loved; feels he has lost everything and has nothing to live for anymore. He goes home, readies himself and wears his police uniform, visits the police station and snatches his service weapon in spite of sub-inspector Hussain's warning. Singh kills Hussain, then makes way to Patna where the state legislature is in session, enters the well of the house, defying heavy security. Singh finds Yadav and drags him by his collar to the Speaker's dais. After an emotional appeal to members of parliament on the leadership crisis and criminalisation of politics that is rotting and consuming the entire system in India, he shoots Yadav in the head, declares his patriotism and yells "Jai Hind" twice.
10/11Ungli
The film stars Emraan Hashmi, Randeep Hooda, Kangana Ranaut, Neha Dhupia, Angad Bedi, Neil Bhoopalam and Sanjay Dutt. 4 friends Kalim (Angad Bedi), Gautam (Neil Bhoopalam), Maya (Kangana Ranaut) and Abhay (Randeep Hooda) delve into what seems to be their "first case", having started a gang called the "Ungli" gang which fights against corruption. Their job is to bug corrupt people and teach them moral lessons quite unconventionally. They target a corrupt minister and become the most wanted people in Mumbai, but also earn the respect, affection, and admiration of the general public in the large metropolitan town. Meanwhile, ACP Ashok Kaale (Sanjay Dutt) meets his superior, DCP Shivraman (Shiv Kumar Subramaniam) who introduces him to Police Commissioner Arvind Kaul (Raza Murad) with the task of deciphering the "Ungli" gang. Later, Kaale travels to another police station where he meets an amusingly frustrated officer, Kaale's colleague and bomb-squad commandant Mishra (Shishir Sharma), who is disgusted with the act of "crime" his recruit Nikhil Abhyankar (Emraan Hashmi) has done. Eventually, it goes so: a college was attended to by the bomb squad when there was news that a bomb was planted there. Nikhil took advantage of the situation and met his girlfriend (Rachel White) with whom he shared a kiss, but soon they were caught by the dogs of the Bomb Squad. Exposing a dirty racquet of money makers in the widely distributed Mumbai police force with a simple chemical trick involving sulfur sprayed overprinted notes that would leave a lasting black impression on the officer's tongue via saliva, Kaale regains duty and is promoted to the post of Commissioner, getting Dayal and Anshuman arrested. Later, Kaale reassures the gang that the city won't need another as long as everything is under control.
