Gunmaaster G9 Trailer: Aparshakti Khurana Leaves Bittu Behind and Steps Into His Villain Era Opposite Emraan Hashmi
Typecasting is a strange kind of compliment. It means an audience believed you so completely in one role that it struggles to picture you in any other.
For Aparshakti Khurana, that role has been Bittu, the loyal, slightly bewildered friend of the Stree films. It is a part he made so warm and so recognisable that it has followed him around ever since.
The trailer for Gunmaaster G9, released this week, is a deliberate attempt to break that spell.
A different kind of presence
Khurana plays the antagonist, the man Emraan Hashmi's character must reckon with. What is striking about the trailer is how little it relies on the usual grammar of screen villainy. There is no thundering entry and no shouting to announce him. The menace is carried by stillness instead: a fixed stare, a pause held a beat too long, a line delivered with unsettling ease.
When the trailer turns to action, he is just as convincing. The fight sequences have a rough, unpredictable edge, and they give the character a physical threat to match the quiet one.
The look is part of the design. Shoulder-length, unkempt hair, loud printed shirts, metal-rimmed glasses and a distinct accent give the character a rustic swagger that feels lived-in rather than costumed.
Why the casting was the point
The director, Aditya Datt, has been candid that this was the idea from the start. Speaking to Variety India in August, he said:
"Aparshakti has never played an out-and-out commercial and crazy-ass villain. This was the thought behind going for him."
He added that when it came to choosing the villain, Khurana "was the man for me".
There is a sound logic here. Audiences arrive with expectations of a familiar face, and a filmmaker who subverts them gains something that an unfamiliar actor cannot provide: the jolt of recognition turning into unease.
The film around him
Gunmaaster G9 is an action romance led by Emraan Hashmi and Genelia D'Souza, with music by Himesh Reshammiya, who reunites with Hashmi and Datt after Aashiq Banaya Aapne. It is produced by Deepak Mukut, Hunar Mukut and Sangeeta Ahir, and presented by Soham Rockstar Entertainment.
The face-off between Hashmi and Khurana is clearly being positioned as the film's centre of gravity. On the evidence of the trailer, that is a reasonable bet.
Whether the performance sustains itself across a full film is a question only the release can answer. But as a statement of intent, the trailer is unambiguous. Bittu, for now, has left the building.
Gunmaaster G9 releases in theatres on 27 November.
For the bigger box office picture this season, see our report on Ramayana's first six days.
This article draws on information shared by the film's publicists, alongside published interviews.
Kenneth Hopkins is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of AltBollywood. Indofuturist, posthumanist and unapologetically Indocentric, he describes himself as an epimemeticist, a swaraji, a freakonomist, a lexicographer and a cartochronicler, mapping the ideas, words and quiet shifts that shape Indian entertainment. Follow him on Instagram at @kennethhopkins.
Comments