Ranbir Kapoor is returning to the big screen with Karan Malhotra’s upcoming venture, Shamshera. Produced by Aditya Chopra, the film sets in the backdrop of the 1800s and tells the tale of a dacoit turned tribe leader. Shamshera sees Kapoor in his first-ever double role where he’s playing a father-son duo.
The three-minute-long trailer begins in the year 1871 in the fictitious city of Kaza, where we see a fierce-looking Kapoor leading his tribe to lock horns with the authority.
We are then faced with a younger – more irritable – Kapoor as Balli, Shamshera’s flamboyant son. Balli, unlike his father, is a masked dacoit, stealing from the rich. In a very desi Robin Hood-esque avatar, the film sees him trying to make do for his community as the wealthy complaint about him to the British government.
We are then introduced to a very menacing-looking Sanjay Dutt as the officer Shudh Singh, who has been brought in to keep a rein on Balli. A cat and mouse chase ensue between Dutt and Kapoor in a rather impressive action sequence.
Vaani Kapoor makes an entry as an exotic dancer, who advises Balli to put a stop to his worrying antics.
Dutt plays a hard-hearted antagonist and is dedicated to putting a leash on Kapoor’s Balli. Towards the end of the trailer, we see Kapoor in a double role as Shamshera and Balli.
However, during a press conference of the recently launched, trailer, Kapoor revealed he really had to convince Chopra to sign him for the aforementioned double role.
“When the film was narrated to me, it wasn’t really offered to me as a double role. But when I heard the story, my immediate response to Aditya Chopra and Karan Malhotra was ‘let me play the father also, because it is such a great role. It is such an interesting, juicy part for an actor to play’. Then, I really had to convince Adi and Karan,” the Tamasha star told the reporters.
He added, “I think after that Karan did a couple of look tests and that’s when he got convinced also. So, initially, it wasn’t offered to me but it hooked me thoroughly as an actor. They were two unique characters and for an actor like me, to play two distinctive characters and make them different was very challenging and very exciting for me.”
Shamshera hits the theatres on July 22 and also stars Ashutosh Rana, Saurabh Shukla, Ronit Roy, Tridha Choudhury, and Pitobash Tripathy.
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