Sanjay Gupta was one of those mainstream directors who found their voice in ripped off Korean cinema, but continued to be heard in the last few years, even when the quality of his work had dipped considerably, simply because he had the courage to question.

His most memorable films may not have been original, but were stylish and entertaining. When Kaante released in 2002, it became a huge hit. The slo-mo walk, a clutch of Bollywood stars, led by the redoubtable Amitabh Bachchan, flanked by Sanjay Dutt, Suniel Shetty and co, was a memorable moment. Till then, it had been an Ajay Devgn trademark; post-Kaante, it became the thing that true baddies had to do to pass the cred-test.

It wasn’t as if directors before him hadn’t done crime thrillers but Gupta’s distinctive stylised grunginess, and his grey-green palette, laced with kinetic doses of characters killing each other, heavily influenced by Quentin Tarantino and the South Koreans, became his very own.

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