Team FC
While the Raj Khosla film is technically a noir thriller, Dev Anand stars as a plainclothes inspector in the Bombay CID who finds himself on the tail of a murderer and uncovers a large syndicate of crime, though not before having to stand in the dock himself on charges of custodial violence.
Prakash Mehra directed Amitabh Bachchan in this Salim-Javed-penned film that put the actor on the map, bristling with all the rage of the Angry Young Man as he reminded a no-good-doer Pran that the police station was not his ancestral home.
Govind Nihalani and Om Puri shone a light on the back-breaking nature of police work and the indignity of suffering for doing one's job, as well as the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back when the police ultimately vent out their difficulties.
Aamir Khan headlined John Matthew Matthan's film about a terrorist network that is brought to its knees by an upright cop and his team, who also unmask a wolf in sheep's clothing in the course of their task.
Set in the badlands of Bihar, Eeshwar Niwas' film starred Manoj Bajpayee as an upright police officer who is determined to bring the organised crime nexus which revolves around a local politician to its knees.
Amitabh Bachchan had his last crack at playing a Zanjeer-like policeman in the Rajkumar Santoshi film, which also starred Ajay Devgn, Akshay Kumar, Aishwarya Rai, Atul Kulkarni, and Tusshar. In a changing India, the film looked at the importance of looking beyond sensationalism and locating the actual culprits of communal violence.
In the Shimit Amin film, Nana Patekar starred as Sadhu Agashe, one of Mumbai Police's many encounter specialists. Ripped from the headlines, the film dealt with public skirmishes between uniforms and criminals, and also with the fallout of these encounters.
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