Star Cast: Ajay Devgn, Kajal Agarwal, Prakash Raj, Ashok Saraf, Sachin Khedekar, Sonali Kulkarni
Directed by Rohit Shetty
Rating: ******
What’s Good: Ajay Devgn as a Actor, out-of-the-world confrontation scenes; extraordinary dialogues; performances par excellence,superb action.
What’s Bad: Nothin, May be something!!!
The film is a remake of the Tamil film of the same name. Yunus Sajawal’s screenplay is fast-paced, especially once the drama between Singham and Shikre begins with their first confrontation. The earlier part of the film is devoted to establishing the characters of Singham, his parents, the local people of Shivgad, Shikre, Kavya and her family members who come to Shivgad from Goa, etc. While some portions of this part are very interesting, the other portions, especially the romantic drama between Singham and Kavya, aren’t equally so. Even the romantic portions have their highs and lows – some parts are entertaining, others are less entertaining. The pace picks up once Singham objects to Shikre’s man signing the register at the police station. From there on, the screenplay is so taut and engrossing that there’s not even a second when the viewer would want to take his eyes off the screen. The drama is both, thrilling and entertaining – thrilling because of the high-voltage drama between Singham and Shikre, and entertaining because of the comedy, mainly by Shikre. In other words, Sajawal’s screenplay after the romantic portion is established, is outstanding. Farhad-Sajid’s dialogues are brilliant and many of them will draw thunderous applause from the audience. In fact, each and every confrontation scene between Singham and Shikre is bound to bring the house down, so wonderful are the sequences and so powerful are the dialogues. No doubt, several dialogues are spoken in Marathi but even if they can’t be understood by the non-Marathi speaking population, they will be enjoyed by that section because the context of those dialogues will be clear even without knowledge of the language. Also, the Marathi dialogues don’t come in the way of the comprehension of the drama.
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Many will be quick to point out the similarities between 'Singham' and the numerous air-headed Salman Khan blockbusters. But low-gravity action, punches that propel bodies into mid-air ballets and cars walking on two feet, make it obvious: 'Singham' is a remake of a Tamil film (Singam) and is directed by Rohit Shetty (who is obsessed with blowing up cars in his films). And one has to be a bit lenient with remakes as they are like miniature models of famous monuments. If your little 'Leaning Tower of Pisa' is chiseled too acute, live with it, it's just a souvenir, right?
The film is about a humble village cop, Bajirao Singham (Ajay Devgn) who enforces law like a preschool moral science teacher. All accused and convicts are let off with a warning, as they're usually his friends and/or belong to the good ol'
gaaon ki mitti, which is later distinguished from
shehar ki dhul through a clichรฉd reference.
Our docile Singham also has a sanki (Marathi for 'retarded') side that surfaces on encountering 'out-of-
gaaon' outlaws. This is an elaborate affair involving gnashing of teeth, clenching of fists and is welcomed with double bass dhols beating to the title anthem, 'Singham, Singham' (can be comfortably replaced with 'chewing gum..').
Singham also flexes his perfectly sculpted body to slap-whack-smash goons who try to get fresh with Kavya (Kajal Agarwal), a family friend, who plays quite 'easy to get' and swiftly falls in love and establishes herself as the female lead.
But Singham's turning point is when he meddles with certified politician cum criminal, Jaykant Shikre (Prakash Raj), who terrifies very little, amuses a lot and loves to do the Cha-cha-cha with just his thumb. The action moves to Goa as Jaykant gets Singham transferred and conveniently enough, his lady-love, Kavya, happens to be based out of the beach state as well. Jaykant's one-liners and silly pranks have Singham flustered enough to almost break down. Naturally, like every self-respecting action hero, Singham gets into his 'crouching
bandar' mode and lets his fists deliver his remaining dialogues.
The film's assumption that mispronunciation is funny makes us endure words like honest (with a loud 'h'), clean cheet (clean chit), noun-saans (nonsense) and sooocide (suicide). The dialogues are spouted with immense enthusiasm but the words defuse the intensity and make them seem trivial.
Devgn does a fair job and conveys sufficient conviction and humility through his character. Kajal Agarwal makes an unobjectionable debut and her eyes would surely inspire a few compliments. Being pitched as a clean cut action film, the fights sequences could be credited as Rajinikanth-meets-Salman-Khan-meets-Red-Bull-man.
