So what do Hunger, Love, and Ego all have in common? These are the catalysts that fire up the angry young man. We can explore the psyche and the craze behind the angry young man archetype in Indian Movies.

The many shades of the Angry Young Man

An upstanding man in society, a Union leader who fights for the rights and grievances of his fellow workers but he is forced to accept the demands of the crooked industrialist as his family is kidnapped, when forced between family and his workers he chose the former. The workers, in a cathartic rage, beat him nearly to death and he finally abandons the family for whom he had abandoned his ideals for.(Deewar 1975)

In a different setting, a boy from Andhra Pradesh is smuggling sandalwood not just to make quick bucks but to earn fame and money that will finally give him the acknowledgement he deserves, since he was the illegitimate son of a great man and was the butt of the ridicule and the wrath from his half-brothers(Pushpa 2021)

Then there is a man in a tight white shirt with a thick beard. The Vigilante who was a bridge between the hero turned boardroom criminal and the modern wild horses; an educated graduate who needed to just get gainful employment and alleviate his father’s sufferings. But he was born into the worst epoch—a time when even job scams were rampant and, being someone with a social consciousness, he wanted to address the wrongs around him.(Satya 1988)

But in the end, he was manipulated for others to do their bidding and there is even a stark scene where his blood literally washed away their crimes. He was neither a king nor a prince; he was more of a stubborn nail that refused to budge under the hammering of the world.

Then there is the crimson prince himself, the man who did everything at holding a woman at knifepoint for putting a hiatus to his libido when her father gate-crashed on their hot making out session, jeopardizing the life of a patient during an operation just because a woman left him and married someone else.(Arjun Reddy 2017)

Moving on, now there is a boy who was born with a silver spoon, the son of the country’s biggest industrialist. He had everything from bungalows to racing cars, everything except his father’s acknowledgement.(Animal 2023)

The origin of the Angry Young Man

But the strange thing is, in Amitabh’s Deewaar, the protagonist is more concerned or rather focused on climbing the social ladder than winning or reconciling the affections of an abandoned father. It was the time of the License Raj system—a time when the entire economy was shackled under draconian rules from the center—so in that age, the hero wanted to rise above by any means. Since globalization was still decades away and the IT revolution never kicked in, being an underworld don was the best ticket to fame and riches.

But in the case of Pushpa Raj, he is going on a never-ending snake and ladder by declaring war on the syndicates, the law and order, and even the PM of the country. We may think becoming a kingmaker would make Pushpa rejoice; now he needed the acknowledgement of his estranged half-brother to feel completed. Unlike Vijay and Pushpa, both Arjun Reddy and Ranvijay had everything—they had money, wealth, and they were brilliant in their respective fields—but the former felt lost without Preethi and the latter felt empty without his father’s acknowledgement.

Cinema has always held a mirror to society and like any art it evolves and regresses as per the taste and sensibilities of the people of that era. In the pre-liberalization era, it had been only a few decades since the British finally left our shores and we were fighting the enemies inside our home this time. The villains of the era were mostly crony and corrupted industrialists of that time and it was up to the hero to surgically remove them from society. In this case, either he will don the costume of a surgeon and remove the corruption like how Vijay did in Zanjeer, or he will sometimes be a part of the world and destroy it from within during the last act like in films like Shakti or Deewaar.

The angry man took a break

But post the 90s and in 2000 the heroes changed. Suddenly he is either a businessman or a software engineer mostly in the UK or US, and this time he doesn’t want to fight corruption or get anyone’s approval, as love is his mission and he will either get the girl at the end or lose her, or lose her and again get her back in the end. The angry man decided to drop the gun and get the laptop. His villains became the other men who were in a race to get the heroine’s attention. Sometimes he won, sometimes he conceded and let the other guy win all for her sake alone. This was a period when Bollywood was churning out some of the best rom-coms and romantic movies of all and some even became timeless classics. SRK in that era taught an entire generation how to love—ironically, in his breakthrough movies, he played anti-heroes. Men who would even die for their obsession.

The Angry Man returns

It was 2017 when an indie movie from the South took the entire country by surprise. The director had such conviction on his story that he even pledged his own family’s land to complete the movie. The plot was said to be partly inspired by the life of the director himself, who was an ex-physiotherapy student. Suddenly, the lead actor became the talk of the town and the movie went on grossing 51 crore with a 25 crore distributor share. Everything about the movie felt raw. The protagonist Arjun Reddy is a true narcissist at heart and he wants everything to revolve around him. Saying he was a control freak was putting things mildly; he controlled every aspect of the girl’s life. He decided what she should study and when, whom she should befriend and her dynamics with her own parents. The tragedy was that some women equated all this as love and care.

We saw a hero who injected a cocktail of morphine and heroin into his veins, which makes him wet his pants, and post-interval we see him wearing a diaper; then everything changes—he loses the girl. He does not take no in a mild manner; he curses her, names a dog after her, sleeps around, and abuses drugs and alcohol but still misses her. He says he is over love but he is not; he is obsessed with Preethi and deep down he thinks he can only love her. Arjun was problematic and messed up but he was raw and real and that struck a chord with many viewers also. We saw him as a walking mess and not the aesthetic drunkard we see in Devdas and when he finally crossed a limit he chose to take punishment for his mistake, the greatest taboo for a doctor—”medical negligence”—rather than fight it. He traveled the world because he can and comes back as a changed man and he wins the girl.

In the Hindi iteration, Kabir Singh, the critics ripped his movie calling it misogynistic and violent and then he told all of them: “you have not seen violence and I will show you violence” and that is how the crimson king was born, the Animal. Nowadays even the movies are marketed with the ‘A’ rating. In the 70s the angry man at the end of the day wanted a quiet life and he was restrained in his use of violence, but nowadays the movies are even measured in terms of how many heads were chopped and the near-god level synchrony in which he killed multiple foes and stacked up their corpses. When they know the movie can rage-bait people with certain scenes, they are not afraid of alienating the general audience.

Sons and Their Estranged Fathers

Animal brought Ranbir back to the limelight after a few box office disasters. Ranbir didn’t play Ranvijay; he was him. When the first trailer dropped we knew this was not a love story or a revenge story; this was a mad love letter to all those reclusive fathers. There is nothing wrong with a boy longing for his father’s affection. The plot of the Varun Grover movie Udaan is about a boy trying to follow his dream amidst the different expectations of his father. He wants to be a writer but his father has other aspirations for him. He wants his son to be a blue-collar worker and at best an Engineer. Rohan is forced to run tracks in the morning, work at lathes all the while trying to win the affection of his abusive and alcoholic father, but in the end Rohan changes and matures; he wants to make sure the void he carried with his dad’s absence won’t haunt his younger brother. So he chose healing over confrontation or forced acceptance.

But Ranvijay will never take no. We had seen lovers who will literally burn the world for their love but in his case Singh will burn the world for him. He gets cut for him and he will break his marriage also for his father’s sake. Like what the director previously said, Animal was violence on full swing. He didn’t just kill or bathe in his enemies’ blood; he was a full-blown control freak, from dictating how his father and sisters should behave in public to scarring his wife and pulling a gun on her, he did it all for Papa. Bachchan’s characters fought against societal oppressions; whether he played the cop or the gangster he had a heart. He may fall for the damsel or the vixen but will never dare to raise his hand on her. In the final act, he will either win or have an epiphany and regret the road he took.

But the newer versions break the laws with impunity; they are at war with themselves and the world—the aggrieved alpha. In the age where kids share 15-second reels with fights that drip with red, violence is the new hook. From tearing out hearts to slaughtering an entire army while a heavy-induced BGM is blasted in the background, whose purpose is to drive the entire theater into a frenzy of chaotic madness. In the 70s the background was laced with melancholy and it was used to show the confusion and conflict in the heroes, but now the whole purpose is to elevate the hero to near-omnipotent god-level stature. Then post the first two weeks, all the posts and reels will blast the scenes from the movies and incels will have a field day. Everything from the hero abusing women to glorify his standing and charisma to shirtless scenes where he is covered in blood will circulate on the internet like in an echo chamber.

Ranvijay was a broken man who only needed a hug from a distant father, but that is not enough of a reason for him to pull a gun on his wife when she confronts him for sleeping with another woman. But still, Animal minted close to 918 crore worldwide. Even some women were appalled by how Singh got a Rolls Royce for his mistress based on the color of her hickey and, in a post-K-drama world, women have a thing for the silent protector. Maybe they want to tame the beast that is at war with the entire world or they are gravitated towards the strong, elusive tactical geniuses who are equipped to navigate the chaotic world around them.

The Vijilante

He wanted to get the respect he was denied then in times of recession or economic stagnation. A discussion on the angry young man will never be over without mentioning Sathya Sathya was not looking to lead a suave life or take out his anger at the women he loved; he was filled with pain and he wanted to shout at the world and let out all the pain that was inflicted on him. He was not someone who wanted to climb the social ladder through any means.

A man who wanted to get a normal job and support his family but the society did not have a space for his wits they wanted only his fists.

His father was not absent or abusive but he was part of the old generation a generation that learnt to keep mum to the atrocities around them but Satya couldn’t his anger and outburst were in stark contrast to his fathers silence. He didnt want the bungalow or would abuse anyone he was actually soft underneath all that brute look, there is a scene in the movie where Sathya can be seeing asking the late Kavyur Ponnama to plead and express the love and affection he have towards the heroine Geetha played by Amala. He could have torn that door to shreds but he chose to control and say how he felt and in that moment sathya became the flower path over the fire. Kamal Haasan over the years had donned many roles and even the roles of vigilantes but they never came close to Sathya because he was as raw as a character will ever get.

The Resilient Heroine

And Animal lovers should understand that men have a hero worship for their dad, but in the process, if they alienate the world they will be alone. So maybe whether you are a Jackie Kelly or a Ranvijay, sometimes you may need to accept that my father was not ideal and walk out like how Rohan did in Udaan. And in the current world women are standing up and in the era of “Girl Friend,” I think when he becomes overbearing, a tight thappad is all that’s required and if that doesn’t work they can always use an electric guitar. In a post-Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey world, a new breed has emerged: the resilient heroine. She is not a passive girlfriend who comes and goes in song sequences; she can match the alphas punch for punch.