The megastar of Indian cinema Amitabh Bachchan has dominated Bollywood for decades with his famous roles and historic blockbusters. From the angry young man of the 70s to his powerful characters in modern films Bachchan has won the admiration and affection of generations. Although the majority of his films have been successful not every film in his career was a hit. The film that we are talking about is none other than Mrityudaata. Released 28 years ago this film stands to be the biggest career failure in Amitabh Bachchan’s remarkable career. Produced by his own company ABCL and directed by Mehul Kumar hopes were high. The supporting cast featured some strong performers like Karishma Kapoor Paresh Rawal Pran and Dimple Kapadia opposite Amitabh but no amount of anticipation could prepare audiences for the disaster Mrityudaata would become. Whats surprising is that his wife Jaya Bachchan understood the fate of this movie early on. During the preview screening she left at the interval. That was enough for Amitabh to know something was wrong. When he asked her why she left Jaya replied that she had found the film boring and it had not engaged her from the start. Much self-honesty as those predictions were they were sadly true. The audiences lack of engagement and Dimple and Amitabhs on-screen chemistry did not create any lasting impression. The film failed to recover its budget as a commercial endeavor at the box office. Amitabh later took responsibility for the flop admitting the film did not live up to expectations and he was partly to blame for finding it not good enough. After scoring a hit after a hit in the 70s and 80s he was facing a series of flops which started to erode his persona. Mrityudata rather than being a comeback film was just one more film on the wrong side of the ledger. Failure however is a reminder that legends also have lows - and is as always an opportunity for courage recognition of it and rising again.