Sahasa Simha (1982)

One of the several dystopian crime thrillers from the early 80s, starring Vishnuvardhan. The convoluted plot begins with family-centered villainy, but then shifts to Bombay to expand into a story of child kidnappers. Police officer Pratap (Vishnuvardhan) busts the gang and reveals his own identity as one of the kidnapped children who had had acid thrown in his face. The scene in which the star Pratap takes off his mask to reveal a hideously disfigured face carries a traumatic charge that belies the promise of triumphant heroism contained in the title’s reference to a lion. Like the several other films in this genre, the plotting is often inept, but it adheres to its key code of leaving the hero a castrated, destitute figure in the end (cf. Ajit, 1982).