Male superstar crisis? Behold the middle-aged action hero

“I’m about 70 percent [like Sylvester Stallone]. I’ll get another 30 percent in two years. Then if you look at Johnny Rambo, he will be ten times better than this,” said the 39-year old John Abraham , flexing his muscles for the camera at a press event for his new movie. It’s a drum he’s been beating in almost every PR interview with painful earnestness: “I feel there is space vacant for the new action hero. Younger heroes are more into rom-coms; seniors are more into comedies and other stuff. I want to occupy the space of an action hero. I want to be known as the ’last action hero’ of Bollywood.” The action hero is the new, new thing these days – but not for the twenty-something star. It’s the aging hero – from Salman Khan to Shah Rukh Khan – who is macho-ing up in some odd Bollywood version of the middle age crisis. Where the industry’s Peter Pan syndrome once meant romancing college girls in unsightly wigs, it now requires serious muscles, stunts, and inevitably on-set injuries . It’s not easy being a forty-something star in B-town these days. From Greek god to Terminator Sure, the muscle-mania isn’t new. Salman led the way in creating the gym-addicted lover boy look which SRK made de rigeur for all male stars  when he finally succumbed to the six-pack mania in Om Shanti Om. But these were pin-up boy muscles: to flaunt not kick ass. To be duly admired as our home-grown Adonises emerged wet and rippling from the waves a la Hollywood hotties of yore, ie Ursula Andress or Bo Derek. [caption id=“attachment_104730” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Shah Rukh Khan and Kareena Kapoor take part in a music launch ceremony for €œRa.One. AFP”] [/caption] “Aaj kal ladkiyon ke liye ladke item ho gaye hain,” complains a suitably bare-chested Abraham in Force. And he certainly ought to know. From his debut in the aptly named Jism through his bath-tub scenes in No Smoking to those infamous publicity shots of his barely covered butt for Dostana, John has long been Bollywood’s ultimate beefcake. The standard-bearer of a generation of male stars who bare more flesh, more often than their heroines. In an amusing gender reversal, it is the male body beautiful that sells movies these days. Be it on the posters for Force, or even the shower scenes in the trailer, it is Abraham’s body that is on full display not that of fellow hottie Genelia D’Souza. But this is a different kind of body. Less Greek sculpture more pure testosterone – on steroids. “But honestly, Force is really important to me in the sense that it establishes me as an action hero. An action hero not in the sense of cables and gadgets, but action hero in the raw, real sense. Like a Sunny Deol in Ghayal. In that space. I want people to watch Force and go, ‘Man, that’s a new young action hero on the scene!’” Abraham  told The Telegraph . And then immediately contradicted himself: “But now I think I have reached a certain level of maturity… with age, with the way I look, with my body. Now, I am prepared to take on action roles.” Playing an action hero – in that “raw, real sense” – has traditionally been a young man’s game. Stallone was thirty when he did Rocky and Deol was 34 years old in Ghayal. They may have continued to play the same kinds of roles long after – Sly is still at it – but not with lasting success. As one critic observed , of the various types of roles available to the male star, “action heroes are doomed to the undignified decline Hollywood forces on aging actresses.” There has been a resurgence of the middle-aged action hero in Hollywood, but it is of the more grizzled, cerebral or at least urbane kind, such as Daniel Craig as James Bond or George Clooney in The American. The midlife superstar crisis The switch to all-out action is also a whole lot odder as a mid-career choice for stars who’ve never been fighters. Or it’s odd until we realise it’s not a matter of choice but of necessity. The forty-something Bollywood male romantic star increasingly has nowhere else to go. It’s macho up or perish. The rise of Imran, Ranbir, Ranveer et al have put traditional romantic roles out of reach. Pretending to be young only works when there aren’t real young stars to make you look bad. Even Aamir Khan could not have played a college boy in 3 Idiots with his nephew starring in a theatre next door. Worse, the only kind of love Bollywood cares about these days is of the very young kind, with Karan Johar-style melodramas that allowed for more adult characters going out of style. Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara is an exception but also a fluke. Director Zoya Akhtar first picked  Imran and Ranbir, and settled for Hrithik Roshan when they objected to being cast with her “too old” brother Farhan Akhtar. Adult romantic movies, however, require strong scripts and innovative plots, and neither is a Bollywood virtue. More so in an era of instant results where even successful movies rarely last more than a couple of weeks in the theatres. As Sudheesh Pachauri sums it up : “The formula is getting more quickfix and shallow. In the age of instant-ism, depth is anyhow not possible. As a result, what you get is not a film but a series of cues to the viewer to get excited about the star,” Continued on next page So what’s an actor whose made his career playing a softie to do? The answer: look South. Salman Khan was the first to make the successful leap in Wanted, a remake of Tamil/Telegu movie Pokkiri, and made it look effortless. An image defined by roughneck brawn  made him a poor fit for the Global Indian roles but a true-blue natural at playing the retro macho cop. The smashing success of Dabangg cemented Bollywood’s love affair with the new/old favourite. And Rajnikanth’s phenomenal Robot assured B-town’s aging super-stars that they too can dream of beating up bad guys for the next twenty years – with the right makeover. We’ve since been treated to Ready, Bodyguard, Singham, and now Force, all variations on the same theme: mid-career Bollywood stars in remakes of South Indian potboilers. Up next is an original, Ra One, Shah Rukh’s 150-crore attempt to put an upmarket multiplex-oriented spin on the action genre. And it’s a gamble he has to win – convincingly – to preserve his superstar brand. As trade expert Amod Mehra told TOI , “Post Dabanng, Singham, Bodyguard, that have marked a return of the action hero, there is a lot of pressure on SRK to deliver. While Ra.One’s music is doing great, and the promos look very promising, there could be an issue with the young audience responding to a 40-plus actor as a superhero.” There’s that pesky age thing again. “After seeing a Tamil film recently, I felt there is a vacant space in action genre,” said Abraham, explaining its allure for these men left stranded in their forties, too old for young love and much too young to play Big B-style old.  But that space is limited, precarious and short-lived. Not everyone can be Rajni. Just ask the original Rambo.