itself—not noticed in the previous adaptations because familiar. As everyone is
reminded in college surveys, no one expects Oedipus to come out unscathed. Surya
might fight clumsily, but, in the end, he wins—he has to.
Importantly, Surya is played by Indian star Amitabh Bachchan, an actor whose
career runs back into roles in the 1970s identified with a so-called “Angry Young Man”
era in Indian film and then through a series of turns as avenging “subaltern superhero”
in the 1980s. Later he rekindles a slowed career with a series of fatherly characters (for
a history, see Chute). His films span not only decades but a spectrum of traditional
masculine life-roles. Simply by stepping into the frame, Bachchan demands a kind of
reverence—he brings those other roles with him, for many Asian viewers. David Chute
reminds that in the late 1990s, Bachchan was acclaimed “the most popular movie star
of all time in an online [BBC] poll” (54). “The Big B,” as he is called (see, e.g., Chhabra,
Chute, and Vijayan), is surrounded with hot young males and sexy young women in Ek
Ajnabee, allowing them the more active roles while he concentrates on presenting the
self-redeeming avenger.
One key scene that demonstrates his focus occurs as his revenge killing begins:
at a dance club where Surya and Shekhar trail a key gangster, Surya, apparently,
wades through the dark and among the throbbing bodies to locate their prey, but
Shekhar joins in a riotous, hip-thrusting, rock-video-quality, semi-hip-hop dance routine,
surrounded by scantily-clad young women and men dressed as cartoon thugs. Though
the film title evokes a “stranger,” as outsider, whom the police knowingly allow to
cleanse the local underworld, the song behind the dance scene is translated onscreen
as evoking a stranger that comes to steal the heart. At dance’s end, Shekhar tears his
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