It looks like the eagerly anticipated war film ‘Bhuj: The Pride of India’ will be yet another feather in the cap of versatile actor Ajay Devgn’s prolific acting career. Notwithstanding the fact that significant portions of ‘Bhuj: The Pride of India’ are driven by VFX, it is creditable that most of the action scenes in the film have reportedly been performed by the ‘Singham’ actor himself, without deploying any stunt double.
For instance, in one scene, the 52-year-old actor has reportedly not just driven a heavy truck of the 1970s era but also achieved the arduous feat of turning the truck ninety degrees on its axis. While performing this stunt, the actor was even displaced from his seat despite taking the necessary precautions. Such is the actor’s sincerity and risk-taking appetite.
In another scene where Pakistani fighter planes attack on the Bhuj airbase, the National Award-winning actor had ostensibly put out a chandelier placed over a six-feet-long lamp post by way of kicking a stone in just a single take.
Ajay Devgn’s daredevil stunts are reminiscent of swashbuckling Hollywood actor Tom Cruise who is quite famous for performing high-risk stunts himself, more particularly for the ‘Mission: Impossible’ film franchise. Right from MI-2’s cliff climbing scene to Ghost Protocol’s spectacular Burj Khalifa stunt to Rogue Nation’s aircraft stunt, Cruise did not purportedly used a stunt double for these scenes.
Although film actors performing their stunts themselves is certainly a perilous exercise, nevertheless, it lends distinctive cinematic credibility which is also appreciated by the audiences.
Besides Ajay Devgn, some other A-list actors who are known to perform their own stunts are Akshay Kumar, Hrithik Roshan, Shahrukh Khan, and Salman Khan, to name a few. Aamir Khan had also famously performed the running train sequence in the 1998 film ‘Ghulam’.
‘Bhuj: The Pride of India’ is all geared up to start streaming on the Disney+ Hotstar OTT platform from August 13, 2021, onwards. The film is set against the backdrop of the Indo-Pak war of 1971 and follows how bravely IAF Squadron Leader Vijay Karnik reconstructed the IAF Bhuj airbase with the help of 300 women.