Rana Daggubati to learn street art for Indo-American crime story

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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USA: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…Which A-lister from Bollywood is going to play Rana Daggubati's mentor-cop in Aditya Bhattacharya's new-rage adaptation of his 1989 cult crime drama Raakh?

In the original, Pankaj Kapoor had played the part of the disillusioned drunken ostracized cop who helps hero Aamir Khan seek revenge when Aamir's girlfriend (Supriya Pathak) is gang raped by a gang lord and his goons.

The story now entitled A Momentary Lapse Of Reason now moves to Los Angeles. And the hero's enemies are now crime-lords operating out of LA. At the moment, neither the director nor Rana are willing to discuss the crucial casting of the Pankaj Kapoor's character in the original.

Rana is excited about this being his first English-language film, and one that requires intense preparation. The film has a very prominent place for the street art of LA. Rana needs to get into LA at least three months in advance of the winter shooting to master various types of street art including graffiti and spray painting.

Explains Rana, "For the crime world of LA the spray paint is the redemption. So many anti-socials harness their negative energy into street art. They spend their time practicing street art with a can of spray paint." Rana needs to understand the language of street art. This, incidentally, was not a part of the original film.

Rana has not seen Aamir Khan in Raakh. He doesn't intend to. "We want to approach A Momentary Lapse Of Reason as an original film and not a remake of Raakh. That film will only be reference-point. Director Aditya Bhattacharya has completely re-vamped and re-invented the film."

Rana admits he was surprised when Bhattacharya approached him. "Why me? That was my first thought. I was impressed by Aditya's faith in me. Of course I knew about him. We both grew up in the film industry, though in different parts of the country. I'm most impressed by Aditya's homework on the subject. The sub-culture and the underbelly of LA has been explored inside-out in the script."

Rana would be shooting in the ghettos and some of the most dangerous locations of LA. "We want to create a film where the danger to the hero's life is constant. We don't want to fake his fear."