Sylvester Stallone’s Bizarre Cameo In A Bollywood Movie Has To Be Seen To Be Believed

Sylvester Stallone’s career has been so fascinatingly varied. The man who wrote one of the greatest movies of the 20th century in “Rocky” has always had the preternatural self-belief required to succeed and has demonstrated as much across the past five decades of his career. Just like the Italian Stallion himself, Stallone always manages to pick himself up just when it seems as if he’s down for the count. He did it in the early ’90s with “Cliffhanger” and he did it in the early 2000s with “Rocky Balboa,” the film which saved the “Rocky” franchise and Stallone himself from obscurity.

But in order to rise from the ashes, he had to descend in the first place, and there have been some remarkable descents in Sly’s career. Even before he experienced a true nadir, Stallone was responsible for directing a critical flop that remains one of only three of his movies to have garnered the dreaded 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. On the other hand, only Stallone and Harrison Ford have achieved the incredible box office feat of having a number one blockbuster six decades in a row. The ’90s saw him starring in one of the best action movies ever made with “Cliffhanger” and one of the worst in “Judge Dredd.” Every actor’s career fluctuates, but there’s something about Stallone’s remarkable swings and his ability to always bounce back that makes his filmography particularly noteworthy.

Peppered throughout that already fascinating filmography are some truly surprising and at times downright bizarre occurrences, such as when Sly showed up as himself in a Bollywood movie.

Sylvester Stallone has appeared in all manner of ill-advised features, from the direct-to-video disappointment that was “Avenging Angelo” to the movie that almost never came out due to poor test screenings — a sorry little film called “D-Tox.” Stallone even almost starred in a disappointing Stephen King crime thriller.

These Sly stinkers all occurred during that early-2000s low-point in the actor’s career prior to 2006’s “Rocky Balboa,” which saw Stallone re-emerge as the star he always was. After this, the veteran star spearheaded a series of films that paid homage to the ’80s action hits he had fronted two decades prior with the “Expendables” films. The first movie arrived in 2010, and saw Stallone in full-on action mode once again (though he originally wanted “The Expendables” to be a comedy). Just prior to the film’s release, however, he whet fans’ appetites with a brief appearance in a Bollywood action comedy that saw him handing out beatdowns in a frankly deranged fight scene.

“Kambakkht Ishq,” which roughly translates as “Damned Love,” focuses on the love-hate relationship between Hollywood stuntman Viraj Shergill (Akshay Kumar) and model/medical student Simrita Rai (Kareena Kapoor). It’s a wild ride set in Los Angeles that blends romance, comedy, and action, with producer Sajid Nadiadwala talking up the movie as a Hollywood-meets-Bollywood extravaganza. “This would be the first Indian film to be shot within Universal Studios,” he told Bollywood Hungana. “We’ve got the permission not only to shoot within Universal Studios, but also to use their logo (…) The film will also have some big Hollywood icons making their appearance in the film.” Those big Hollywood stars included Denise Richards, Brandon Routh, and Sly himself, who had by far the biggest, and strangest, cameo in the movie.

Sylvester Stallone’s main scene in “Kambakkht Ishq” is the kind of brilliantly unhinged action sequence we’ve come to expect from Bollywood, and sees the Hollywood star rescue Kareena Kapoor’s Simrita Rai from a gang of undesirables. Just what is going on in this delightfully over-the-top scene isn’t quite clear, but Rai and her cohorts are confronted by a gang of generic thugs, one of which looks to be one the verge of retirement from his days as a faceless goon. After some horrible dubbed lines are thrown back and forth, Sai runs for her life, only to bump into a hooded figure who reveals himself to be none other than Sly Stallone.

Of course, a Hollywood action hero of his standing can’t countenance a defenseless woman being menaced by thugs, and he quickly starts laying out her attackers with ease. Things get more and more absurd as the fight goes on, with Sly crushing a group of thugs by trapping them between a wall and a car that he pushes with his bare hands. Then, he pulls a parking meter directly out of the pavement and we get some glorious shots of the implement smacking various thugs across the face in slow motion. In the end, Sly’s skills prove too much for the attackers, who retreat from the scene, leaving Rai and her friends to thank Stallone for saving their lives.

There’s also an award ceremony scene that intercuts real-world footage of stars like Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts arriving on a red carpet with original footage that sees Stallone appear once again to help deliver an award to Akshay Kumar’s Viraj Shergill. The stuntman character sings Sly’s praises as he accepts the honor, which is all just a bit awkward as Stallone just stands there stoically accepting this cavalcade of compliments. But what makes this particular scene so surreal is that the camera cuts to shots of the audience, which is peppered with celebrity lookalikes, including a Jack Nicholson doppelganger and what looks to be a Whoopi Goldberg lookalike. Why? Well, if you read any of the reviews you’ll soon learn that asking such a question of a film like “Kambakkht Ishq” is redundant. Whereas something like “Dhoom” is remembered as a magnificent version of “Fast and Furious,” “Kambakkht Ishq” isn’t really remembered at all.

Though “Kambakkht Ishq” was a modest box office hit when it was released in India back in 2009, it was panned upon its debut, and will never be remembered as one of Stallone’s best movies. Writing for IBN LiveRajeev Masand labelled the movie “loud, vulgar and seriously offensive,” pointing out its many logical inconsistencies and absurd scenarios. “Where in the world,” he writes, “can you expect to find Sylvester Stallone lurking in alleys waiting to come to the rescue of hapless girls?” But by far Masand’s biggest gripe with the movie was the “consistently crude tone” which according to the reviewer is maintained with “innumerable references to sex, virginity and homosexuality,” physical violence against women, and “a scene in which Akshay farts in Amrita Arora’s face for no reason at all.”

Still Rachel Saltz was a tad more forgiving in her New York Times review, where she claimed that “Kambakkht Ishq” “has only one frantic desire: to entertain. It spottily succeeds, despite its frequently crude humor, relentless pace and a few unpalatable racial bits.” Sadly, the next sentence reads, “Viraj sports black face in one scene, and in another, during an airport search, he is violated by a large African-American woman.”

The question then becomes, “Why would Stallone agree to appear in a film like ‘Kambakkht Ishq?'” Speaking to Eros Now Musicthe actor claimed that he was drawn to the feature by the fact that a proper Bollywood-Hollywood crossover hadn’t been done. “To me, I feel as though we’re bridging a gap between two cultural and artistic centers,” he said. Fair enough, but he also claimed that he was won over by the film’s subject matter. “It deals with a subject that I like,” he said, “which is about heart, about giving and spirituality, it’s about physical manifestation of love.” As Anil Sinanan points out in his TimeOut review, however, “Kambakkht Ishq” does contain frequent references to women to as “either ‘b***h’, ‘nosy cow’ or ‘frigid babe'” — which is an odd kind of love to manifest.