Will Imran Khan make a convincing villager?

We have seen the young Khan play a city slicker in almost all his films so we are wondering if he will be able to pull off the ‘gaon wala’ act in Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola

Vishal Bhardwaj’s movies are usually set in a rustic premise, a world which you must have heard about, but rarely seen. His next film Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola, is one such outing. It was first offered to Ajay Devgn who had played the title role in Omkara. For some reason, Devgn had to let Vishal’s film go, which has now landed in the lap of Imran Khan who has so far only played the urban dude. Also, thanks to his upbringing, he has an accent and a body language which is essentially very yuppie. This left us wondering if he would be able to play Bijlee’s Matru without making us laugh for all the wrong reasons. But then we thought, hey, it’s a Vishal Bhrdwaj film and if he can make Saif Ali Khan enact Langda Tyagi with such an authentic élan, we can trust him. We heard that Imran has started working at his character for this film in typical Bollywood style, but for a change he hasn’t hit the gym – he has joined a local akhaada where he will be trained by a pehalwaan (wrestler). This is probably the easiest bit of the job because what comes next is getting the accent and body language right. Vishal is known to be a tough taskmaster who conducts workshops for his actors and gives them enough space to perfect their act. We hope that Vishal and Imran get it right with this film, because after their films, 7 Khoon Maaf and Mere Brother Ki Dulhan respectively, we are not sure if we will forgive them easily if we are tortured in the theatre, yet again.