Here’s a still from the Hindi blockbuster Sholay.<\/p>\n
Originally released in 1975, the film beacame so popular that some cinemas ran it for years. It remains the most successful Hindi movie of all time. I’ve got the DVD – it’s great.<\/p>\n
The plot is relatively straightforward. Small-time criminals Veeru and Jai (played by Dharmendra and living legend Mr Amitabh Bachchan, respectively) are employed by ex-policeman Thakur Baldev Singh (Sanjeev Kumar) to apprehend notorious bandit Gabbar Singh (the excellent Amjad Khan) whose gang has been terrorising the village of Ramgad. There are a couple of twists along the way to keep things lively, but essentially it’s a struggle between good and evil.<\/p>\n
The heroes really are heroic. The bad guy really is nasty – in one memorable scene, wiping out the Thakur’s entire family as an act of revenge. In another, he forces Basanti (Hema Malini) to dance on broken glass to save Veeru’s life.<\/p>\n
And – importantly for a Bollywood film – the songs are great. Combine all this with action, humour, pathos and romance and you’ve got a winning formula. Certainly, if you spent your hard-earned rupees on seeing this at the cinema you’d definitely walk out having got your money’s worth.<\/p>\n
The film owes debt to Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns – leading to it being described as a ‘curry western’. Very clever. The landscape (near Bangalore) even looks like the wild west. Of course, a remake is in the pipeline. Sounds like a shameless cash-in to me. But if I’m in the country at the time, I’ll go see it all the same. Bah.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here’s a still from the Hindi blockbuster Sholay.<\/p>\n
Originally released in 1975, the film beacame so popular that some cinemas ran it for years. It remains the most successful Hindi movie of all time. I’ve got the DVD – it’s great.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-stories","tag-bollywood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldofpablo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldofpablo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldofpablo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldofpablo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldofpablo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worldofpablo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldofpablo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldofpablo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldofpablo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}