5 Performances To Celebrate Salman Khan’s Superstardom

 Bhai doesn’t have to do anything  to get his fans’ attention. He  just has  to  walk that  languorous   walk  and  talk  that  that devil-may-care drawl for the Salmaniacs go wild. But hang on!  There are  some films in which Bhai  discarded his starry mannerisms   and transformed into the character he  was playing.

1.     Hum…Dil De  Chuke Sanam(1999):  Not Sooraj Barjatya,  but  Sanjay Leela Bhansalibrought  out the best in Salman in  his second feature film. The two   worked  together  for the  first time in Bhansali’s directorial debut  Khamoshi  The Musical where Salman  put in a neat performance as  Manisha Koirala’s boyfriend. In Hum…Dil De Chuke Sanam Salman’s innate sense  of mischief  was  soundly tapped. He was very clearly a  success as a  prankster   guest in a disciplinarian musician’s  household,  Salman even gave  farting a heroic legitimacy in this  film where his  real-life mom Helen played his  mother. He  loved  it.So did his   fans.

2.     Tere Naam(2003):  As Radhe the goon  who made the pretty Bhumika Chawla swoon in her  tracks, Salman  Khan was  a delight, As  the loverboy suffering psycho-trauma after a  severe  head injury he was  a revelation. I’ve never seen  Salman transform  into a character so effectively  in  any other  film before or since.  Director SatishKaushik is planning a sequel.

3.     Bajrangi Bhaijaan(2016):   In the very aptly titled Bajrangi Bhaijaan Salman actually slipped into a character named Pavan Chaturvedi.And he remained there. All through.Rarely have we seen Salman stay in character throughout the film. The last time he played a character and not ‘Salman Khan’ was in Kabir Khan’s Ek Tha Tiger .There he kept slipping in and out of character.Not this time, buddy! Not in Bajrangi Bhaijaan. What we see on screen is an avatar of the innocent God-fearing upright and honest ‘Prem’ from Sooraj Barjatya’scinema, a Hanuman Bhakt whose self-righteousness would have been boring had it been played by any other star-actor.We could say Salman plays the Son of Prem in BajrangiBhaijaan. And let’s not waste any more time in saying  this is one of  Salman’s career’s most accomplished performance to date, heartfelt passionate and emotional, as he takes charge of a little girl’s travel plans back to her home in Pakistan.

4.     Sultan(2016):  Nope, you can’t touch this. Salman Khan’s superstardom is beyond the precincts of rationale or logic. After the  heart-warming Bajrangi Bhaijaan act, Salman again pushed himself physically and emotionally to a new level of commitment in Sultan. Playing the goodhearted solidly dependable Haryanvi wrestler Salman brought a kind of feisty vulnerability along with a spiritual certainty to his instantly likeable character. The physical and emotional transformation is so palpable and authentic as to remind us of what Robert de Niro achieved in and outside the boxing ring in Martin Scorcese’sRaging Bull.Salman’s accent was pitch-perfect. And that’s where the performance began.Salmantook  himself dead seriously, for a  change.

5.     Mujhse Shaadi Karoge(2003): Here’s what producer Sajid Nadiadwala did  with his buddy Salman and neighbour Akshay Kumar when they came together. He  flipped their personalities. Salman played the god-fearing, honest-to-goodness  saintly  lover-boy.Akshay played the roguish devilish  hard-drinking  fraudulent suitor. They both wooed  Priyanka Chopra with a do-or-die  vigour. Eventually Salman  got the girl.Eventually they both stopped doing films with  her. But that’s  another story.