Vijay 69, Review: VATs 69 in a name?

A story that looks very elevating and moralising on paper does not necessarily translate into an engaging film. Vijay 69 is one such film. It seems to have been made to showcase that Anupam Kher, who played an old man’s role in Mahesh Bhatt’s Saaransh (1984), when he was 29, can play such a role, as a 69 year-old at 69. That is a no-brainer. Forty years on, he has done 540 films and started an acting school, besides trying his hand at direction too. Okay, so Anupam Kher is a good actor. The idea of a 69-year-old attempting the triathlon looks interesting. Melodrama and linguistic accents do not a good film make. That says it all. Want to read what is it all about? Read on.

50-year-old Milind Soman, Indian model and actor, managed to complete the Ironman triathlon at Zurich 3 ½ years ago. Triathlon participants are required to complete a 3.8 km swim, a 180.2 km-long bicycle ride, and a 42.2 kilometre running race, in this exact order, within 16 hours. There are three stages, hence the name, Triathlon! So, it goes without saying that Milind is worthy of respect. And so will be Vijay Matthews, the lead actor in Vijay 69, if he completes the triathlon, at the grand old age of 69, leaving Soman 19 years behind.

The film begins with Vijay perched atop the wall that holds back the Arabian Sea, in Mumbai, at the Gateway of India, fully dressed and a bag slung across his shoulder. You are led to believe that he is going to commit suicide. As he is about to jump, a taxi passes by and a fat woman seated inside shouts out to him not to do something silly, then the cab drives on. And then Vijay jumps! After the fat lady’s eye witness account, his friends and neighbours prepare for a funeral. Since his body is not found, they decide to perform his last rites, treating an empty coffin as a regular one, with the body in it. A Parsee friend talks nonsense, instead of an elegy, obviously in the Parsee accent, while the fat woman sobs and cries. And then the miracle occurs.

Vijay comes back, hale and hearty. How come? “I went for swim,” he reveals. But why was he precariously perched on the wall, asks the fat woman? “I was getting into position for a dive. That is how it is done,” continues Vijay, a very good swimmer. Asked where was he the whole night, he confesses, “After the swim, I felt like drink and went to meet a friend, with whom I drank a lot. Naturally, I did not want to come home drunk, so I stayed the night with him. And here I am. But, you fools, what were you going to do?” Everybody is sheepishly apologetic and life becomes normal for them, again. As the story progresses, we learn that Vijay wants to make his name and get his due place in the history of Indian sport, at the unimaginable age of 69. Initially highly skeptical, both friends and officials make fun of him, even demotivate him. But Vijay is his name, he is the hero the film, and is played by Anupam Kher. Where the film dives next is…your guess is as good as my knowledge.

Writing credits are shared between by the director Akshay Roy and Abbas Tyrewala. Firstly, the credentials of Akshay Roy. Akshay was a sportsman and the school basketball and cross country captain in, class 12. Besides, he was a college monitor and house captain in his final year. While school, he also took part in various debates and plays and won the school cravat in both spheres. Akshay joined St. Stephens College, Delhi where he studied English Honours. Here that he got fully drawn into theatre in the college's Shakespeare Society, and performed in and directed various plays, like The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, The Glass Menagerie and In Camera.

Post St. Stephens, Akshay joined the Mass Communication Research Centre (MCRC), Jamia, for a 2-year MA in Mass Communication course, where he studied filmmaking. Coming to Mumbai after that, he worked as an Assistant Director with Farhan Akhtar on 'Lakshya', Mira Nair on The Namesake and Vanity Fair, Deepa Mehta on Water, Paul Greengrass on The Bourne Supremacy and John Hay on a BBC film. Impeccable credentials, even before he directed his debut film, Vijay 69. Abbas, on the other hand, is a kind of veteran writer, with tiles like Jaane Tu... Ya Jaane Na (2008), Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003) and Pathaan (2023). So the credit or debit for churning a slow and boring film like Vijay 69 must go first to Akshay. Or is it the other way round? For you can never take the names The Bourne Supremacy and Vijay 69 in the same breath. And can you equate hamming and over-the-top performances with a slice of life film? Vijay 69 says you can.

Major damage is done to the narrative by the inclusion of a non-Parsee actor to put across the eccentricities of some members of that community. They do speak ParseeGujHinGlish, in a typical accent. But only about 1,00,000 of them in India. Population is dwindling at an alarming rate, even eating into their ritual of feeding corpses to vultures, whose population too, is diminishing, ironically. With such a small target audience for the Parsee track, a large section of the audiences will not get the background of the Zorastrians, and take the character of the Parsee to be just an idiosyncratic nitwit. In the 60s and 70s, and maybe the 50s, the Parsee character did bring on smiles and chuckles among the viewers’, but that era is passé in 2024.

I could wager a bet that this member of the cast is the writing effort of Tyrewala, whose name suggests that he belongs to the Bohra community, who speak partly like Parsees, both having their roots in Gujarat, and Gujarati being their ‘mother tongue’. Is this what additional dialogue credit means, against the name of Abbas Tryewala? A sample of Parsee Gujarati by yours truly, “Arrreeerrre, ain kem karech? “Manjan band karnee. Bhonu khaavaa aavech key nai?” This is for my friends of the Parsee community, many of who were my school and class-mates for seven years. Surely, with his experience, Akshay could have come up with a better theme, or at least written the screenplay with caution and pre-caution. Both have been dispensed with, and replaced by, unimaginative screenplay, full of dullness and ennui, with Anupam playing the unlikely, unto the end, wayward genius, who achieves the impossible.

Why he puts up a scorn or frown on his face almost all the time only he knows. Perhaps it is perennial depression that causes it, or the negativity which fills the character’s persona. Chunky Pandey works hard on his ill-delineated character, does a reasonable job with his language as the Parsee, and that is all he can do, in this set-up. Kudos for accepting this role. Guddi Maruti comes back after a hiatus, her output alarmingly dipping after the turn of the century. Real name Tahira MarutiRao Parab, she is daughter of late Maruti, an actor director, mainly a comedian. Her mother, a Muslim, was an actress too. So she has a double engine leading her acting. But on account of her thick body, her body of work is reduced to doing silly comedy. Here, for a change, she has a meatier role, literally.

Ann Matthews, Vijay’s daughter is known for a variety of roles that makes her a veteran of sorts: Zed Plus as the parallel lead opposite Adil Hussein Daasdev by Sudhir Mishra and Satra ko Shaadi Hai plus Bengali films, plus Hollywood, plus…She should have known better than what comes across as Ann Matthew. A little bird tells me that she is good in the OTT series Bombay Begums, directed by Alankrita Srivastava and Birnila Chatterjee, which is a series portraying strong women. society. Another actor billed among the major players is Mihir Ahuja.

While I am going to be conservative when it comes to stars (rating, not the actors, my friend!), I might mention all those who contributed to the film: Music by Gaurav Chatterji (original background music), cinematography by Sahil Bhardwaj and editor Manas Mittal.Vijay 69 might have been more palatable at 69 minutes. At 112, it achieves none of the Athlons, even if it is tri-ing to do so.

Filmgoers who were around in the 50s, 60s and 70s might remember that in every cabaret (now replaced by the item song) dance and in every bar and in every rich man’s house, the set was incomplete without several bottles of the VAT 69 whiskey strategically placed. What was natural on the screen may not have been the natural off screen because of a certain gentleman called Johnny Walker. As an aside, they could have placed VAT69 somewhere, to create brand association VAT 69 leads to Vijay 69. Did they actually have it on screen in this film? Escaped me, if they did. But why have the VAT 69 bottles all but disappeared. And why did VAT 69 exit from Hindustani cinema? Ask Google, please.

Rating: * ½

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