Bollywood actor Ranbir Kapoor learned the art of Kalaripayattu, a traditional martial art form, for one of the fighting sequences for his upcoming film 'Shamshera'.
Kapoor, who is coming to the big screen four years after he delivered the blockbuster 'Sanju', is pitted against Sanjay Dutt, who is playing an evil, merciless, cold-hearted brute force of nature, Shuddh Singh.
The film has a Kalaripayattu-inspired edgy fight sequence which has been directed by Franz Spilhaus, who has previously choreographed films like the Denzel Washington starrer 'Safe House' and Hrithik Roshan and Tiger Shroff's blockbuster 'War'.
Sharing the thought behind the sequence and how Ranbir executed it, director Karan Malhotra said, "Being set in the 1800's, it was important that action set pieces also look from that era and are mounted at a visual scale like never before. We wanted audiences to see something new, trying to achieve this. Ranbir is playing the Hindi film hero and he has to pull off incredible action scenes. One such scene required him to pull off a Kalaripayattu-inspired fight sequence that we shot on a dusty field and constructed an arena that resembled the arena of those times!"
Malhotra added: "As an actor, Ranbir jumps at anything new! So, when we explained the scene to him, he wanted to ace it, and I remember he put in many, many days rehearsing the scene with the action director of this sequence, Franz, and his team. This scene is filmed on Balli, who has to fight the army general, at a hugely critical juncture of the film. It was a challenging shoot sequence."
"It was hot, it was humid, and it was really, really dusty. To make matters worse, it was also windy. But hats off to Ranbir for pulling this off with elan. This is one of the biggest highlight points of the film."
Produced by Aditya Chopra, 'Shamshera' is set to release in Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu on July 22, 2022.
[With Inputs from IANS]
