Vishwatma

Synopsis

Vishwatma is the story of a man named Prabhat Singh (Sunny Deol) who is an honest and dedicated police officer. He usually has no time for his family and his father is constantly at loggerheads with him. His father believes in peace and opposes bloodshed and disturbance in the country. Prabat is currently on a mission to apprehend the most dreaded crime lord Ajgar Jurrat (Amrish Puri) who lives in Kenya but operates in India. Things take a turn for the worse when Prabhat kills Ajgar's brother in an encounter. An angered Ajgar abducts and kills Prabat's school-going brother. Prabhat's family is devastated and his father blames him for his brother's death. Prabhat's father disowns him from the family. Meanwhile, one of Ajgar's men turns against him and threatens to turn him in to the police. Fearing his arrest, Ajgar has the man, Madan Bhardwaj (Mangal Dhillon) killed on the night of his wedding. Ajgar's son also molests Madan's wife, leaving her traumatised. Thus, Madan's brother Akash Bhardwaj (Chunky Pandey) swears revenge on Ajgar. But Ajgar flees to Kenya and it's almost impossible to bring him back to India in order to try him in court. So, the police commissioner (Dalip Tahil) decides to look for Prabat as he is the only one who can achieve the impossible. Prabhat moves to a remote corner of a distant village in India after his dad disowns him. Prabat's dad also changes his mind and decides to go to persuade Prabhat to take on the mission to bring Ajgar back to India.Prabhat agrees to take on the mission but insists that Akash also join him. Akash agrees as well. And they fly all the way to Kenya on a mission to bring the dreaded criminal to justice in India. There, Prabhat and Akash find Madan's sister-in-law Renuka (Sonam) who's also on the same mission. She helps them get to Ajgar. But this task is not as easy as they may have thought as Ajgar is a respected citizen in Kenya. Prabhat and Akash seek the help of another honest cop, Surya Pratap (Naseeruddin Shah) to apprehend Ajgar. However, Surya Pratap thinks Ajgar is an honorable man. Akash falls in love with Ajgar's daughter, Sonia (Jyotsna Singh) and Prabhat falls for Kusum (Divya Bharti). Renuka falls in love with Surya, despite knowing he has a daughter. Surya's wife committed suicide while Ajgar's son tried to molest her. When Surya learns that Ajgar's son was the reason behind his wife's death, he sets out to take revenge against Ajgar as well.

Finally, the trio succeeds in apprehending Ajgar and his men and bring them to India. And all ends well.

Cast

Production

After the mega success of his 1989 film Tridev (film), Rajiv Rai decided to embark on another action-thriller with three main male leads and thus "Vishwatma" was conceived. Rai decided to go for a change of venue and planned to set much of the movie in Kenya. He wanted to cast the same three male leads as Tridev (Sunny Deol, Naseeruddin Shah, and Jackie Shroff). However, Jackie's son (Tiger Shroff) had just been born and his astrologer had advised him to not travel abroad for a year. Thus Rai opted to cast Chunky Pandey instead of Shroff.

Rai also reused many of the cast members from Tridev including Amrish Puri as the main villain, and Raza Murad, Dalip Tahil, Tej Sapru, and Dan Dhanoa as the secondary villains. One main difference being that while Sharat Saxena played a negative role in "Tridev", in this movie he had a positive role as the strict but comedic commissioner of Kenya police. Rai also included a short narration about the meaning of "Vishwatma" by Naseeruddin Shah in the movie, something that he had done with "Tridev" as well.

Much of the shooting of the film was done in Kenya's main cities of Mombasa and Nairobi. The song "Saat Samundar" was shot at the "Bubbles Discotheque", a very popular club in Nairobi in those days. The climactic car chase was shot on the open plains of the Masai Mara National Wildlife Reserve. Many of the beach scenes were shot in Mombasa's various beaches and beach hotels.

The film also employs many Swahili phrases and words in its dialogue such as "Jambo" (Hello), "Mzuri sana" (Very nice), and "Mimi ni kubwa sana" (I am very big/great).

Music

After the success of the music of Tridev, everyone expected Viju Shah to conjure magic with this film. The soundtrack was well received but did not scale the heights of Tridev. It managed to become popular, especially "Saat Samundar Paar," written by Anand Bakshi and rendered by Sadhna Sargam, This song's background music was inspired from the British duo's song Pet Shop Boys - Heart. The song continues to play on radio stations and at discothèques (remixed) 20 years later.

For the movie 2014 "Kick", the producer Sajid Nadiadwala bought the rights to the song "Saat Samundar" for Rs 1.5 crore. He did this to pay tribute to his late first wife Divya Bharti, on whom the song was picturized in "Vishwatma". In "Kick", the song plays in the background when Salman Khan is dancing in a disco.

The other songs that got noticed when the film released were "Aankhon Mein Hain Kya", "Dil Le Gayi Teri Bindiya" and the title track. Sapna Mukherjee (who won her first Filmfare award with "Oye Oye - Tirchi Topi Wale" in Tridev) sang two tracks in this film, but could not re-create the Tridev magic.Vishwatma theme is copied from Enigma's Hallelujah