Besides Kangana Ranaut’s Dhaakad, Bollywood’s tryst with female-led action films: Are we doing enough?

Is Bollywood ready to make a Kill Bill, Tomb Raider, Charlie’s Angels or Captain Marvel — a true-blue actioner with a woman doing the honours? When was the last time you watched a female actor pick up guns and grenades and take down the enemy single-handedly? Might be an uphill task given the gender-specific term reads, “one-man-army”.
It won’t be wrong to say that actors like Akshay Kumar and Salman Khan have ruled this particular genre, with women largely relegated to their own boxes, with breakout roles being written for them at times, but action-oriented films have been few and far in between.

So, when Kangana Ranaut says, “Heroines in Hindi films have not got the opportunity to do action,” she isn’t wrong. She makes a point that women actors not just need the privileges of leading ladies, but “the privileges of a hero on set.”
Khoon Bhari Maang’s climax sequence had Rekha indulging in some action.
Hema Malini unleashed punches in Razia Sultan (1983), Rekha also fought her enemies head-on in Khoon Bhari Maang (1988). But, that’s the most they got to do back in the day, because the handful of films barely helped in altering the way we saw our women doing action onscreen. The most their characters did in the name of action was ride a horse or bike, or shoot a bullet or two. Because until they are the damsels in dress being saved a muscle-flexing man, where will taalis and seetis come from?
The 1990s was surely an era of romance and comedy. Though with the turn of millennium, filmmakers started experimenting with female-centric subjects, but they mostly revolved around their coming-of-age stories, or empowerment. There was Lajja (2001), Queen (2013) and Mary Kom (2014). But, at the end of the day, the challenging part of action went to men.
“We should look at a film just as a film. We shouldn’t attach sexuality (gender) to it. We, women, have contributed so much to so many films. Since all the credit is given to men, we have faced the damage because of that,” Kangana added, while promoting her film Dhaakad recently.
Anushka Sharma self-produced NH10 that emerged as an important film in her career.
Dhaakad has Kangana playing an Interpol agent Avni who’s an assassin, out to unravel a human trafficking nexus. The trailer is loaded with ruthless bloodshed with Kangana unleashing mayhem upon her nemesis amid noisy gunshots and bombs.
Dhaakad is touted to be a one of its kind female-led action movie. That’s also like an end product of half-a-dozen remarkable films that go down the Bollywood hory for trying to do justice to the genre. There’s likes of Samay, Mardaani and Jai Gangajal. However, they can be clubbed under female cop dramas. And if they aren’t wearing the uniform, they’re spy agents like Shilpa Shetty in Dus. But her portrayal majorly got lost in the mega star cast comprising of Sanjay Dutt, Abhishek Bachchan, Suniel Shetty and others.

Interestingly, when director AR Murugadoss decided to remake Tamil film Mouna Guru (2011) in Hindi, he made one big change. He flipped the plot and cast a woman in the lead role. Thus, Sonakshi Sinha’s Akira (2016) deserves a mention here. She played a short-tempered college student who gets embroiled in a crime. The action was raw and real, and Sonakshi did a fine job.
Murugadoss told IANS in 2019, “When most heroines are busy decking up, hopping from one set to the other, singing duets with different heroes, Sonakshi was learning to fight like a man. When she was performing stunts, I asked her to imagine herself as a man, to shrug like a man, to punch like a man, and to stare like a man. The way she transformed into Akira amazed me.”

That Sonakshi needed to perform “like a man” to ensure its action scenes look convincing, might be debatable, but it did become an honest attempt at putting a woman on the front foot. The movie however had a below expectation run at the box office. That brings us back to the inherent question — is revenge and action just meant for the men?
Priyanka Chopra had to travel to the US for an intense action-packed role in Quantico. While she had done Don and Jai Gangaajal in India, this was true-blue action. Give women a chance and they might turn the table in their favour. Anushka Sharma was a force let loose in NH10. And Taapsee Pannu’s 7-minute action sequence in Ba (2015) lifted her from the supporting league to the mainstream Bollywood, giving a solo spin-off of her character in Naam Shabana (2017). Taapsee today has become synonymous with women-led stories.

Absolutely! Always make the most of what you have…proud of you and your onwards and upwards journey 🙂 https://t.co/c2tnYDtmu4
— Akshay Kumar (@akshaykumar) January 23, 2021
We must credit filmmakers Raj and DK for trusting a female antagon in their The Family Man 2. And we saw the fine job that Samantha Ruth Prabhu did in the role.
Stating how she wanted to push her boundaries and explore unfamiliar emotions, Samantha said during the promotions of her web show, “Women actors tend to get unidimensional characters and it becomes difficult to portray them as there is fear of your performance becoming repetitive. With Raji, it was so different and exciting as it allowed me to explore a new dimension.”

The recent examples only depict that all female actors need is a chance. And with superstars culture on the wane, and pan-India being the flavour of the season, time is ripe to experiment with characters that defy roles conventionally defined gender. We only hope Kangana Ranaut’s fiery avatar in Dhaakad will open more doors for our female actors.