Sholay (1975) screened last year in cinemas as part of an anniversary 4K edition. I wish I had seen it in a cinema. Due to life and the three hour plus run time, I had to watch it broken up, almost treating it like a serial. A full blown cinematic epic whose cultural impact and status in Indian culture, from what I’ve read, is on the level of Jaws or Star Wars.
Seven samurai? Try Two Rogues. A retired police captain (Sanjeev Kumar) hires two thieves (Amitabh Bachchannand Dharmendra) to help him capture a notorious bandit (Amjad Khan). Incorpotates the operatic style of Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns and slow-motion death spirals of Sam Peckinpah, and it’s also yet a big-hearted and romantic swashbuckler in spirit. When early on in the movie, our two rogues ride around in a motorcycle and side-car singing about their friendship (the tune ‘Yeh Dosti Hum Nahi Todenge’), that sealed the deal. Great action sequences and wonderful musical sequences, and just hanging out as the thieves settle down into village life, determine to protect it and defeat the villain, whose voice always has an echo effect with his shouting commands on a mountain side.
Hema Malini is a delight as Basanti, who charts a character journey from comic relief due to her incessant talking, to proving her mettle in a sensational sequence where she dances to save her heart’s love. The edition I watched also had continual text warnings whenever somebody was smoking, and was supposedly a 3D release with traces of added things popping out at you (eg a piece of steel digitally flying at you when a train crashes).
Available on SBS On Demand and Tubi.
VHS Tracking 