1. Khudgarz (1987) – The unlikely friendship between a Punjabi urban businessman and a rural Bihari babu (Shatrughan Sinha) was actually Rakesh Roshan’s take on a life-long friendship gone sour in Jeffrey Archer’s novel Kane & Abel . Rakesh earlier wanted to cast Jeetendra and Rajnikanth in a Punjabi-Tamilian dosti.
He changed the cultural backdrop of one of the friends’ characters to cash on Shatrughan Sinha’s real-life friendship with Jeetendra.
2. Jaag Utha Insaan (1984): Though it was Himmatwala that launched her into stardom in Bollywood, it was this unsuccessful nugget of a film produced by Rakesh Roshan and directed by the inimitable K. Vishwanath, where Sridevi shone as a temple dancer wooed by a Brahmin boy (Rakesh Roshan) and a socio-economically challenged underdog (Mithun Chakraborty). Sridevi danced and emoted as though there was no tomorrow. And as long as she did, we didn’t care if there wasn’t a tomorrow. This, according to me, is the most neglected film of Sridevi’s vast and far-ranging oeuvre. She played a Brahmin girl in love with a Dalit boy (Mithun Chakraborty). Her dancing with the South Indian temples as the backdrop is to die for. Director K. Vishwanath, who normally preferred to work with Sridevi’s rival Jaya Prada, here made an exception that made us Sridevi fans drool in delight. Very few films have captured this classical side of Sri’s personality. This one is soup for the eyes and the soul.
3. Bhagwan Dada (1986): In this Rakesh Roshan-produced film Sridevi was cast as a con-woman who pretends to be a hooker, takes moneyed men into hotel rooms, gets them drunk and runs off with their money. The role was great fun to play and we can easily see Sridevi having the time of her life in the company of Rajinikanth and the 12-year-old Hrithik Roshan. “Hrithik was just 9 when he did my father-in-law’s film Bhagwan Dada. Hrithik was not supposed to do the film. But the child actor who had a pivotal role with Rajnikanth fell ill. My father-in-law director J. Om Prakash insisted, ‘Let’s take Duggu.’ I was against the idea. ‘Daddy, Duggu can’t act!’ I protested. I wanted Hrithik to focus on his studies. We’d have never known there was a brilliant actor lurking in him if my father-in-law had not insisted.” Rakesh Roshan vividly recalls 9-year-old Hrithik’s first shot. “Since along with Rajnikanth and Sridevi I also played the lead in Bhagwan Dada, I was there on the first day of shooting when Hrithik had to give his first shot. It was with Sridevi. I was so nervous and embarrassed that I hid behind a pillar on the sets, just watching my son quietly. I could see him very quiet, not communicating with anybody. I thought he was just not interested. But when he gave his first shot he was perfect!! Like Sridevi, my son transformed when the camera was on. That was the moment I realized my son had it in him to be an actor. We already knew he was a natural-born dancer. Before that I thought of him as a quiet boy lost in his own world of studies and school. But the way he did his death scene in Bhagwan Dada left me stumped. How could a 9-year-old boy who doesn’t even know about death, play dead so convincingly?! That’s when we knew.”
4. Kaam Chor (1982): Rakesh Roshan produced this quaint good-hearted film about a beautiful kind woman who reforms her indolent, work-shirking husband. Rakesh Roshan took the backseat as Jaya Prada fronted this mellow drama directed by one of Rakesh’s favourite directors, K. Vishwanath, who saw the sparks in Jaya Prada long before any other director. Be it Kaam Chor or Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Khubsoorat, Rakesh Roshan was always game for doing heroine-centric films.
5. Krrish (2006): Is it a bird, is it a plane? No, it’s Hrithik Roshan!!! Fascinating is the word for the measured manner in which he glides through the air to the beat of Rajesh Roshan’s songs… or cuts through the breeze to the stunning special effects created with a verve so far unknown to Indian cinema. Krrish takes us into the world of masked fantasy where the stakes are incredibly high… as high as the computer-generated leaps that the superhero takes as he tries to save the world from the clutches of a megalomaniacal villain with a glint in his eyes that can only belong to Naseeruddin Shah. Speaking to me about the film in an old interview, Rakesh Roshan had said, “To make a niche film is relatively easy. Sanjay Bhansali’s Black was a fantastic film. And the business it did was surprising. But I make fully commercial films. People expect me to surpass my previous collections. Krrish has done so in the first three days. Krrish belongs to the same genre as Superman or King Kong, so it had to go by the genre. In every film of that genre the heroine wonders about the superhero’s identity.”