MUMBAI: The action film genre was written off from mainstream Bollywood in the mid 90s. So much so that these were neither considered ‘classy’ films nor family entertainers. At that time, who ever dwelled on the notion that there would ever be a time in Bollywood, where, this same action film genre would be revived in a style, which would be at par with the Hollywood films?

What’s more, this revival and conceptualization has been done devoid of any assistance from Hollywood technicians. Yes, we’re talking about Dhoom:2 and its action director Allan Amin.

“For the conceptualization of Dhoom:2 actions, I did not take any assistance from Hollywood technicians. Neither did I take any reference from any English films. All that I knew was that I wanted the entry of all my characters to be as impactful as the entry of characters in any James Bond films,” says Amin.

Sample this…

Hrithik Roshan’s entry via parasailing and the train sequence followed by sand boarding.

Uday Chopra’s entry vrooming on his bike atop a boat in the middle of a lake.

Abhishekh Bachchan emerging in a speed boat from under the water.

Bipasha Basu showing her shooting prowess in a police control room.

Aishwarya Rai’s stunning entry in the heavily guarded fort to steal the sword.

A subsequent question that comes to mind pertains to the cameo of the bikes stunt in Dhoom:2, to which Amin says, “The audiences would come to theatres to watch Dhoom:2 expecting much more than just the bikes. But of course deep down everyone would expect to see the bikes too because they add an element of nostalgia to the film. Hence we decided to keep a short bike sequence in the tunnel, which we shot in Filmcity.”

Justifying his statement of ‘short bike sequence’ he says, “According to me, the timing of the action sequence of bike is sufficient. If we made it longer than that then establishing the scene would consume a lot of time.”

He further adds, “In the bike sequence, the shot when the bikes go on one wheel has been done by doubles. The experts who came down from Australia to do that scene are a part my team. Even in the roller blade scene a duplicate has been used. Other than that all the scenes have been done by the actors themselves.”

Hrithik trained for three months for the roller blade sequence. Also he trained for snow boarding and sand boarding in Dubai for the sequence in which the train runs at a speed of 60 kms per hour and Hrithik sand boards and skims behind it. Abhishekh too trained for the jet skiing for his opening shot.

Amin currently operates with a team of 12 people. “From designing to execution, my team had 100 per cent involvement in the action scenes of Dhoom:2. This included story boarding the sequences and designing the angle for the shots. All action scenes that were shot have been put together in the film,” states Amin.