India, Oct. 8 -- Bollywood has been accused of 'copying' Hollywood films for far too long. There are filmmakers whose filmography sections on Wikipedia have a separate column describing 'adapted from', so endemic is this in Hindi cinema. Even today, when studios buy rights for official remakes, Bollywood has often been caught playing catch-up. The reverse - Hollywood remaking a Hindi film - is a rarity. But it did happen in 2015, and it happened with the film that first shot Nana Patekar to stardom in the 80s.

In 1989, Vidhu Vinod Chopra made Parinda, often regarded as one of the first Bollywood films to set a template for depicting the underworld and gangsters realistically. The film starred Anil Kapoor and Jackie Shroff as brothers who...