By Subhash K Jha

It took a spirited 20-year old Shruti Haasan to get a 50-plus Mithun Chakraborty on top of a hurling train in Thailand for an intricate stunt sequence in Soham Shah’s Luck.

And what’s more, Soham Shah was also asked to get on top of that train by his cast

Recalling those anxious days in Thailand, and earlier in South Africa where the earlier part of the same train-top stunt was shot, Soham says, “Our fight director Allan Amin had taken every precaution. But still as the director, I had my heart in the mouth when I saw my entire cast from Sanjay Dutt and Imran Khan; to Ravi Kissan and Shruti Haasan getting on top of that hurling burning train.”

The trickiest thing was to get Mithun Chakraborty in the action mode. “He hadn’t done stunts for decades. But when Shruti whom we didn’t want to put on the train-top and for whom we had got a body-double, insisted on doing her own stunt, Mithun da was right up there along with the rest of the cast.”

Sanjay Dutt too was out of action for a while.

Says Soham. “Not for a second did he hesitate in doing what I’d say are the most dangerous stunts filmed in a Hindi film.”

Shruti who makes her debut in Luck went through death-defying stunts without batting an eyelid.

“Hers is a very unusual “macho’ kind of debut not feminine delicate and romantic at all. She has proved herself to be quite a chip of the block,” says Soham referring to Shruti’s dad Kamal Haasan who made a career of jumping into the fire.

Shruti has also sung the title song in Luck.

Says Soham, “The fact that Imran and Shruti; have known one another from childhood certainly gave our unit that little edge of comfort.”

“Looking back, I don’t know how we managed to shoot that entire train-top sequence without any of us getting hurt. Luck was on our side, I guess.” - Sampurn Media