Aatish: Feel the Fire

About the film

Aatish: Feel the Fire, shortly called as Aatish, is a 1994 Indian Hindi-language action crime film directed by Sanjay Gupta in his directorial debut, has an ensemble starcast Sanjay Dutt, Aditya Pancholi, Raveena Tandon, Karisma Kapoor and Atul Agnihotri in lead roles. The supporting cast includes Shakti Kapoor, Gulshan Grover, Kader Khan, Ajit, Tanuja.

The film marked Sanjay Gupta's directorial debut in Bollywood. The film reworks and combines elements from two earlier crime films, the Indian film Deewaar (1975) and the Hong Kong action film A Better Tomorrow (1986). Upon release, it grossed ₹145 million (equivalent to ₹950 million or US$10 million in 2023) at the Indian box office.

Premise

Baba and Avinash are brothers who live in a shanty house with their widowed mother, who makes a living by working as a housemaid. When a stalker attempts to assault their mother, Baba kills him and the three, along with an orphan named Nawab, take shelter with a crime boss named Uncle. Baba would like Avinash to study and become a better person, and in order to do this, he decides to earn money in the underworld. Avinash completes his training and becomes an Inspector, where his first assignment is to arrest Baba and Nawab - much to his shock as he had never associated Baba with having any criminal background. Avinash must now decide whether to proceed with apprehending Baba and Nawab or resign from the police force.

Production

Aatish uses elements fairly similar to Deewaar (1975), written by Salim–Javed, with Sanjay Dutt as the older criminal brother (inspired by Amitabh Bachchan's character in Deewaar), Atul Agnihotri as the younger police brother (inspired by Shashi Kapoor's character in Deewaar) and Tanuja as the mother. Aatish had a story "straight out of Deewar" but added a twist, with the mother supporting the criminal brother. In addition, Aatish also unofficially reworked elements of John Woo's Hong Kong film, A Better Tomorrow (1986).

Soundtrack

The music of the film was composed by Nadeem-Shravan and the lyrics were penned by Sameer. According to the Indian trade website Box Office India, with around 2,500,000 units sold, this film's soundtrack album was the year's tenth highest-selling.

Key details