Tribute and Reference
In the opening credits the movie is dedicated to legendary Indian Cinema director Vijay Anand and writer James Hadley Chase. The film is a tribute to Vijay Anand's influence on the Hindi noir/thriller genre. It pays tribute to him in a scene in which Anand's movie Johny Mera Naam is being watched by a character. At the lobby of a hotel room, the receptionist is seen watching Vijay Anand's movie Johnny Mera Naam, starring Dev Anand. It is from the scene of that movie that this one gets its title. When the female lead is introduced she is reading R.K. Narayan's The Guide, which was later made into a movie directed by Vijay Anand, starring Dev Anand.
While the story is not based on any of James Hadley Chase's novels, it does follow a similar plot line. There are numerous references to James Hadley Chase within the film, the lead character himself is seen holding a copy of one of Chase's books. Director Sriram Raghavan has presented the same genre in his previous venture Ek Hasina Thi also.
The film also makes multiple references to Amitabh Bachchan classic Parwaana and also shows scenes of a major plot sequence of the movie.
There are multiple tributes to the actor Dharmendra himself. While dying, Dharmendra plays the song " Mera Gora Rang Le Le" - his character's favourite song sung by the character's wife in the movie, which is from his movie Bandini in which played in the movie. They are from Yakeen, Aadmi Aur Insaan and Naya Zamana.
There are a couple of references to Hollywood movies too, for example when Shiva is introduced in the movie, he's watching Stanley Kubrick's last film, Eyes Wide Shut. And Dharmendra's line "It's not the age. It's the mileage" echoes a line from the Indiana Jones movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. Apart from the note-counting scene obviously inspired from Scarface, there is a reference to Titanic as well as Citizen Kane in the scene where the female lead is assembling a huge jigsaw puzzle.
The color Red is used predominantly in the movie, as a homage to Sin City. Raghavan himself had confessed wanting to shoot the whole film in Black and White.
But the main game, is Raghavan's main inspiration of the plot was not Vijay Anand's film Johny Mera Naam, but instead is adapted from Stanley Kubrick's film noir classic The Killing (film). Raghavan employs a rope-a-dope by implying that his movie as a tribute to Vijay Anand and also adding in James Hadley Chase as distraction, while infact the similarities in the plot elements like the ex-conman character, the cheating wife and no-one escape climax are not coincidental. The only stark difference is that Kubrick's Johnny isn't the gaddar (the traitor).
Read more about this topic: Johnny Gaddaar
Famous quotes containing the words tribute and/or reference:
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“A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the ground of the representamen.”
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