The Big Bull
Ratings: 3/5
Language: Hindi
Genre: Biographical, Crime
Director: Kookie Gulati
Writer: Arjun Dhawan, Kookie Gulati, Ritesh Shah
Based On: Real events (Harshad Mehta and his financial crimes)
Producer: Ajay Devgn, Ravindra Mankame, Anand Pandit, Sanjay Paraswani, Kumar Mangat Pathak, Vikrant Sharma, Sahil Singh
Music: Chandan Saxena, Ankit Tiwari
Cinematography: Vishnu Rao
Editing: Dharmendra Sharma
Art Direction: Raju Kumar Sahani, Anupamey Sawale
Release Date: 23 October 2020
Streaming On: Disney+Hotstar
Star Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Ileana D'Cruz, Samir Soni, Sanjeev Pandey, Srestha Banerjee, Hetvi Karia, Lekha Prajapati, Durgesh Kumar, Vaibhav Choudhary, Aditya Belnekar, R. Bhakti Klein, Sanjay Paraswani, Sorabh Chauhan
Plot: The story of the film is based on real events of financial market that took place between 1990 and 2000 involving Harshad Mehta and his financial crimes.
Review: The Big Bull tells the same story of Harshad Mehta in a movie format. Starring Abishek Bachchan in the protagonist’s role, the movie revolves around how Harshad Mehta sold dreams to India. The movie also stars Ileana D’Cruz in a prominent role.
The movie also highlights how Harshad Mehta raised the stock market like a bull by pumping money into it and manipulating stock prices.
Harshad Mehta was a flamboyant stock broker known as the Big Bull who, in the early 1990s, in collusion with unscrupulous bankers, pulled off what was until then the biggest stock market and banking fraud in the history of India.
When news of the scandal broke in April 1992, it turned a stock market boom to bust and plunged the then Congress government, led by Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, into a crisis.
Mehta was convicted by the Bombay high court and sentenced to five years in prison in September 1999, a ruling confirmed by the Supreme Court in January 2003.
Mehta was under custody in the Thane prison when he complained of chest pain and was hospitalised. He died of a heart ailment, aged 47, on 31 December 2001.
This film is said to be inspired by Hansal Mehta’s Scam of 1992. Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story is a Hindi drama web series directed by Hansal Mehta which inturn is adapted from journalist Sucheta Dalal and Debashish Basu’s book, The Scam: Who Won, who Lost, who Got Away.
