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Vishwatma
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Rajiv Rai
Produced by	Gulshan Rai
Starring	Naseeruddin Shah Sunny Deol Chunky Pandey Sonam Divya Bharti Jyotsna Singh Amrish Puri
Narrated by	Naseeruddin Shah
Cinematography	Romesh Bhalla
Edited by	Naresh Malhotra
Music by	Viju Shah
Distributed by	Trimurti Films
Release date	24 January 1992 (1992-01-24)
Running time	181 minutes
Country	India
Language	Hindi
Box office	₹9.5 crore

Vishwatma (transl. Universal Soul) is a 1992 Indian Hindi-language thriller film directed by Rajiv Rai and produced by Gulshan Rai. It stars an ensemble cast of Naseeruddin Shah, Sunny Deol, Chunky Pandey, Divya Bharti (in her major Hindi debut), Sonam, Jyostna Singh. The film follows Prabhat, an honest police officer, being sent to Kenya on behalf of the Indian Government to capture the dreaded crime lord Ajgar Jurrat and bring an end to his illegal businesses. Viju Shah composed the music. The Song "Saat Samundar" became a huge chartbuster of that year.

Vishwatma marked Rai's third directorial venture after the blockbuster Tridev (1989) and was initially planned to be a sequel to the same. It was the most-expensive Indian film at the time of its production; being extensively shot in Kenya and the first Indian film to be shot there. The chartbuster song 'Saat Samundar' was shot at Bubbles Discothèque, a popular nightclub in Nairobi in those days. The modern-sounding song struck a chord and still enjoys a massive cult status among Indian audience.

The film received critical acclaim upon release from contemporary as well as modern critics, with praise drawn towards its screenplay and action sequences. It earned over ₹95 million in its total theatrical run worldwide and was the sixth highest-grossing Indian film of 1992. The soundtrack created a rage and was very much successful. It proved to be a major launchpad for Chunky Pandey as well as for debutanté Divya Bharti, who went on to achieve the limelight in Bollywood.

Plot

Prabhat Singh is an honest and dedicated police officer, but he usually has no time for his family and due to this, his father is constantly at loggerheads with him. Prabhat's father believes in peace and opposes violence. Prabhat is now placed on a mission to apprehend the most dreaded crime Lord, Ajgar Jurrat, who currently lives in Kenya but operates in India. Ajgar has a rivalry with another Crime Lord, Madan Bharadwaj. Ajgar plans to kill Madan and his brothers in a single move. But the youngest Bharadwaj brother, Akash, who is not involved in any criminal activities of his mafia brothers, overhears Ajgar. He tries to stop Ajgar but fails when Prabhat arrives at the scene and arrests Akash while Ajgar's gang flees from the spot. Akash requests Prabhat to save his brothers. Prabhat goes to Bharadwaj's place but Ajgar was able to eliminate the Bhardwajs before his arrival and Ajgar's son Rajnag, raped Madan's wife, the lone survivor of the massacre. While escaping, Ajgar's brother, Nagdansh was fatally shot by Prabhat.

Ajgar, enraged by the death of his younger brother, abducts and kills Prabhat's younger brother, Munna. Prabhat's family is devastated and his father blames him for Munna's death and disowns him. Prabhat leaves his job and moves to a remote corner of a distant village in India, where he takes in an orphan named Babu, who is his only friend.

With Ajgar's increasing criminal activities, the police commissioner decides to approach Prabhat as he is the only one who can capture Ajgar and take him back to India. After seeing the necessity of the situation, Prabhat's father also changes his mind and decides to apologize for disowning Prabhat. To make amends, he tries to persuade Prabhat to take on the mission to capture Ajgar and bring him to justice.

Prabhat agrees to take on the mission but insists that Akash also join him, to which Akash agrees. These two join hands and take the flight to Kenya. Meanwhile, Babu goes to live with Prabhat's family.

In Kenya, they are met by their host, an honest Kenyan Police Officer of Indian Origin, Surya Pratap, a widower with a young daughter. Ajgar is already aware that Prabhat and Akash are there to capture him, so he convinces the Nairobi Police Commissioner to assign Surya to be their guide, knowing fully well that the law-abiding Surya will make sure that Kenyan citizens like Ajgar will not be harmed by foreigners. Surya explicitly tells Prabhat and Akash, that he has his eyes on them and will not hesitate to apprehend them if they do any mischief during their stay.

Prabhat and Akash find and meet Madan's sister-in-law Renuka, who's also seeking vengeance, so she helps them get nearer to Ajgar and offers them some more details on his whereabouts. She informs them that Ajgar is a respected citizen in Kenya, so it is much harder to apprehend him. They try many tricks to capture Ajgar and his henchmen, but Surya foils them each time. Prabhat and Akash then try to persuade Surya to arrest Ajgar, but Surya is reluctant to put Ajgar behind bars. As a result, Surya gets very frustrated with the duo, because he thinks they are causing trouble in Kenya.

After a few days with the help of Renuka, Prabhat and Akash make a breakthrough to apprehend Ajgar without Surya's knowledge and decide to make their move right away. Upon hearing this, a furious and betrayed Surya arrests them to be deported back to India. Renuka informs Surya about the truth behind his wife's mysterious death: his wife died while trying to escape from Rajnag who attempted to rape her. After learning the truth and realizing that Prabhat and Akash were right after all, an enraged Surya confronts Ajgar but is captured along with his daughter. Prabhat and Akash, who have escaped their flight to India, rescue Surya, and the three join hands in the mission to catch Ajgar and his henchmen.

In the end, the mission is successful. Prabhat, Surya, and Akash bring Ajgar and Rajnag back to India. Ajgar and his son attempt to escape but are fatally shot by Prabhat, Akash, and Surya.

Cast

• Naseeruddin Shah as Surya Pratap: Sunaina's father; Renuka's love interest
• Sunny Deol as Prabhat Singh: Anurag's son; Kusum's love interest and fiancé
• Chunky Pandey as Akash Bharadwaj: Sonia's love-interest
• Divya Bharti as Kusum Verma: Prabhat's Love interest and fiancée
• Sonam as Renuka: Surya's love interest; Madan's sister-in-law
• Jyotsna Singh as Sonia Jurrat: Ajgar's daughter; Rajnag's sister; Akash's love-interest; Tapasvi's former fiancée
• Amrish Puri as Ajgar Jurrat: Rajnag and Sonia's father
• Mahesh Anand as Rajnag Jurrat: Ajgar's son; Sonia's brother
• Kiran Kumar as Nagdansh Jurrat: Ajgar's brother
• Tej Sapru as Bada Nilu
• Dan Dhanoa as Majhla Nilu
• Anand Balraj as Chhota Nilu
• Gulshan Grover as Tapasvi Gunjal: Sonia's former fiancé
• Rajesh Vivek as Dacoit Manohar Dev
• Master Manjunath as Babu: Prabhat's adoptive brother
• Dalip Tahil as DCP Gupta
• Sharat Saxena as Commissioner B.L. Roy
• Raza Murad as Commissioner Pandey
• Alok Nath as Anurag Singh: Prabhat's father
• Aparajita as Prabhat's mother; Anurag's wife
• Yunus Parvez as Mr. Verma (Verma ji): Kusum's father
• Dinesh Hingoo as Mr. Sharma (Sharma ji): Kusum's maternal uncle
• Sanjay Kohli as Inspector Balbir Govot
• Vijay Arora as Jailor
• Mangal Dhillon as Madan Bharadwaj: Akash's brother; Renuka's brother-in-law
• Vishwajeet Pradhan as Madan and Akash's brother
• Samar Jai Singh as Madan and Akash's brother

Production

After the mega-success of his 1989 film Tridev, 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, after considering to launch Suniel Shetty, a personal friend, opted to cast Chunky Pandey instead of Shroff as one of the leads.

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 the 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).

Soundtrack

After the success of the music of Tridev, everyone expected Viju Shah to conjure magic with this film. The soundtrack was well received, selling 2 million units and becoming the year's seventh best-selling Bollywood soundtrack album. Its most popular song was "Saat Samundar Paar", written by Anand Bakshi and rendered by Sadhna Sargam. The song uses a sample from the Pet Shop Boys song "Heart" (1988). "Saat Samundar Paar" continues to play on radio stations and at discothèques (remixed) 30 years later. The Vishwatma theme is copied from Enigma's Hallelujah with only the female humming as Viju Shah's input. It features playback singers Amit Kumar and Kumar Sanu (for Naseeruddin Shah), Alka Yagnik (for Jyostna Singh), Sadhana Sargam (for Divya Bharti), Udit Narayan (for Chunkey Pandey), Sapna Mukherjee (for Sonam) and Mohammad Aziz (For Sunny Deol).

For the 2014 movie 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 was 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.

All the songs were penned by Anand Bakshi.

Track list

References

1. "Boxofficeindia.com". 14 October 2013. Archived from the original on 14 October 2013.
2. "Bollywood in Kenya, home to deserts, colourful tribal culture, & exciting wildlife attractions". Bollywood Presents. 24 February 2017. Archived from the original on 9 July 2021. Retrieved 7 July 2021.
3. Pandya, Sonal. "25 years of Vishwatma: 5 ways 'Saat Samundar Paar' song still lives on". www.cinestaan.com. Archived from the original on 13 October 2020. Retrieved 7 July 2021.
4. "Vishwatma: Bollywood's Flashiest Story of Patriotism in Pardes". Arré. 24 January 2019. Archived from the original on 9 July 2021. Retrieved 7 July 2021.
5. "Boxofficeindia.com". 14 October 2013. Archived from the original on 14 October 2013.
6. Mohanty, Anish (5 June 2021). "Viju Shah on 10 of his favourite compositions and the stories behind them". Planet Bollywood. Archived from the original on 5 June 2021. Retrieved 7 July 2021.
7. KATIYAR, ARUN. "Cheaper to work with, Nubile Young Things become a rage in Bollywood". India Today. Archived from the original on 9 July 2021. Retrieved 7 July 2021.
8. ^ Almeida, Alex. "25 years of Vishwatma: How Chunky Pandey replaced Jackie Shroff". Cinestaan. Archived from the original on 7 October 2020. Retrieved 2 June 2017.
9. "Film Shooting Locations | Filmapia – reel sites . real sights". www.filmapia.com. Archived from the original on 18 July 2017. Retrieved 2 October 2020.
10. "Music Hits 1990-1999 (Figures in Units)". Box Office India. Archived from the original on 5 February 2010. Retrieved 5 February 2010.

External links

• Vishwatma at IMDb

• 1992 films
• Trimurti Films
• 1990s Hindi-language films
• Films scored by Viju Shah
• Films set in Kenya
• Indian action thriller films
• Films directed by Rajiv Rai
• 1992 action thriller films