Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Vinod Khanna | ... | Shakti Velhu / Dayavan | |
Feroz Khan | ... | Shankar Waghmare | |
Amala Akkineni | ... | Sarita Velhu (as Amala) | |
Amrish Puri | ... | Inspector Ratan Singh | |
Anupam Kher | ... | Mr. Kohli | |
Aruna Irani | ... | Tara | |
Madhuri Dixit | ... | Neela Velhu | |
Imtiaz Khan | ... | Anna | |
Alok Nath | ... | Karim Baba | |
Aditya Pancholi | ... | Assistant Commissioner of Police | |
Sudhir Pandey | ... | Manjle Anna | |
Mahavir Shah | ... | Chokshi | |
Anjan Srivastav | ... | S.P. Raghavan | |
![]() |
Jainendra | ||
Tinnu Anand | ... | Ajit Singh |
Young Shakti witness the wrongful killing of his father at the hands of the South Indian police after which he conducts his cremation then run off by killing the officer responsible. He is then rescued by Shankar Waghmare who takes him to Karim Baba in Bombay where he is provided with living quarters as well as a job. Shakti continues to witness police brutality especially at the hands of a corrupt and alcoholic police inspector, Ratan Singh. He visits a brothel with his friend, Shankar and is attracted to a prostitute named Neela. Then Karim Baba is found hanging in a prison cell with the police writing off his death as an act of suicide. Shakti then closes in on Ratan Singh and murders him in an open arena. Shakti then aids numerous slum-dwellers when they are made targets so much that he is respected by the masses. He gets marry to Neela and soon they are proud parents to two children, Sarita and Sooriya. Shakti gains full control of Bombay city when he murders his rivals as well ... Written by gavin (racktoo@hotmail.com)
I had watched this movie while I was studying in Madras (Tamil Nadu). This movie is a poor copy of an excellent Tamil movie named Nayakan. The problem is that Dayavan movie pretended that it is not a copy and did a very poor job of copying. Dayavan is produced and directed by Feroz Khan who made some mega productions like Qurbani and Jaanbaaz. In this movie Feroz took the short cut and copied a widely popular movie without putting any though on his own. I was very impressed by the photography of the original Nayakan which captured the loneliness of a boy while keeping things dim. Dayavaan failed on the photography front. Nayakan starred Kamal Hassan who very deftly portrayed his characters with equal measure of strength and hesitation. Vinod Khanna in Dayavan doesn't even come close to Kamal in capturing the range of emotions. Watch a scene in the movie where Kamal and Vinod grieve for their dead son and note that Vinod was copying Kamal and still did a bad job of it. Original movie had excellent score provided by Illayaraja and it was poorly copied in Dayavaan. Overall I was very disappointed to see this remake/copy.