"Sholay" directed by Ramesh Sippy is a western-action film from India and regarded as one of the most essential films to have come out the Bollywood industry. The film revolves around a police officer whose family is murdered by a gangster, who then hires some hitmen to avenge the gangster.
I was not impressed with the film. It had a decent script by Salim-Javed, but overall mediocre performances around the entire cast, except for the convincing Sanjeev Kumar's potrayal of Thakur Baldev Singh.
"Sholay" was clearly amibitious for 1975, but has major staging problems in executing its action sequences, resulting in a range of horrible stunt scenes. On top of that, I thought it was marked by sloppy direction, in that the quite simple plot was layed out in approximately three and a half hours. In spite of the obvious shortcomings of being a great film, I thought it had several qualities.
For one thing, it had a believable antagonist - Gabbar, and in particular protagonist, Thakur. Apart from this, a big quality to the film is its cinematography - the DP utilizes nice pans and wide-shots, as well as interesting close-ups, clearly inspired by the cinematographic style of Sergio Leone. Also, I found the score to be quite nice in certain parts.
I had a reasonable amount of fun watching it, but to me, it was at least one hour too long. I can appreciate that "Sholay" is surrounded by nostalgia to domestic Indian audiences, but I was not impressed in spite of its reverred status as a masterpiece. Perhaps though, it is just that by Bollywood standards.
I was not impressed with the film. It had a decent script by Salim-Javed, but overall mediocre performances around the entire cast, except for the convincing Sanjeev Kumar's potrayal of Thakur Baldev Singh.
"Sholay" was clearly amibitious for 1975, but has major staging problems in executing its action sequences, resulting in a range of horrible stunt scenes. On top of that, I thought it was marked by sloppy direction, in that the quite simple plot was layed out in approximately three and a half hours. In spite of the obvious shortcomings of being a great film, I thought it had several qualities.
For one thing, it had a believable antagonist - Gabbar, and in particular protagonist, Thakur. Apart from this, a big quality to the film is its cinematography - the DP utilizes nice pans and wide-shots, as well as interesting close-ups, clearly inspired by the cinematographic style of Sergio Leone. Also, I found the score to be quite nice in certain parts.
I had a reasonable amount of fun watching it, but to me, it was at least one hour too long. I can appreciate that "Sholay" is surrounded by nostalgia to domestic Indian audiences, but I was not impressed in spite of its reverred status as a masterpiece. Perhaps though, it is just that by Bollywood standards.