Singh Saab The Great movie review

Cast:Sunny Deol, Urvashi Rautela, Amrita Rao and Prakash Raj
Director: Anil Sharma

SPOILERS ALERT

There is something to be said about that 'dhaai kilo ka haath' which Sunny Deol patented in well-made action films like Ghatak, Ghayal and Gadar - Ek Prem Katha. Lately, his career was eclipsed by wrong choices. Maybe, the 'haath' (hand) was not in the right place.

Back in form with a bang in Singh Saab The Great, Sunny delivers a wallop. Looking every inch the Sardar in-charge, he furnishes the film with a flair that is quite engaging. No, he doesn't wrench off a hand-pump to thrash the goon. But yes, he does turn a static jeep from back to the front with his bare hands.

And guess what? He looks every bit convincing doing the heroic hijinks in a country certainly not meant for the weak and the infirm.

When we first meet Singh Saab (The Great) in this non-stop actioner, we are told by his on-screen aides that Singh has formed a political party called Aam People's Party. Now, if that reminds you of a certain Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party, then I am sure the resemblance is not coincidental.

God knows, we do need a change in governance and in the rampant corruption in the country. Anil Sharma's over-zealous though never-misplaced passion to put across Sunny in a messianic mould works to a large extent. The film is an old-fashioned, very simply written morality tale between an idealistic hero and a villain who rules a backwater town with an arrogant ruthlessness that romances decadence and debauchery.

What works well for the film are the powerfully executed confrontational sequences between Sunny and the arch-villain Prakash Raj. While Sunny shows exemplary control in the inherently melodramatic milieu, Prakash Raj tries a variation on his stereotypical villainy. He comes up with a character who's a Bihari goon who can at the drop of a hat, break into a song and dance while executing the sleaziest of deeds and dialogues.

God knows, we need a bit of humour in the decadence.

It's a murky world of compromised morals out there made bearable by larger-than-life heroes who know they are up against impossible odds, and yet find a kind of subverted comfort in making their unbelievable hero-giri credible by dint of their powerful screen images.

Sunny Deol has that kind of a presence. While romancing the mean, he is also capable of infusing moments of goofy tenderness in his scenes with his screen wife, played by a pretty and reasonably watchable debutante Urvashi Rautela. Their glaring age difference is also brought to chuckling notice by a script whose USP is its determination to not act over-clever while executing an old-fashioned revenge tale.

Amrita Rao struggles to give substance to an under-written role of the narrator and journalist who seems to have only one assignment, to trail Singh Saab (The Great) through his crusade against corruption. Clearly, she's ready to fall in love with the Missionary Man, if only the script would allow her.

You've seen the noble bureaucratic hero in different uniforms,take on the corrupt villain in numerous films. What works in Singh Saab The Great is the way the action scenes flow in motions of choreographed contemplation. Action directors Tinu Verma and Kanal Kannan lend a rigour to the narrative.

While the plot tends to sag under the weight of italicized cliches, the twists and turns are negotiated by the technicians with ample aplomb. The sound design is deliberately exaggerated and meant to manipulate moments of machismo. S Gopinath's cinematography captures the feverish flourish of men on a rampage with gusto. The art director makes innovative use of rusty-brown colours that lend a bronzed hue to the brawn festival.

It would be the easiest thing in the world to dismiss Sunny's pronounced heroism as archaic and 'loud'.But don't be hasty in your judgement.

Anil Sharma and Sunny Deol's combustive force earlier yielded the powerful Gadar - Ek Prem Katha. This time they aspire to the same level of dramatic velocity, and succeed to an extent.

There is a virility and fluency to the storytelling. Singh Saab The Great is a homage to the cinema of the 1980s when Sunny was the daredevil determined to bring on a social reform. Somewhere, that hero lost his way. It's good to have him back.

Even pushing retirement age, Sunny Deol still delivers the ass-kicking goods in this retro action programmer.

Even pushing retirement age, Sunny Deol still delivers the ass-kicking goods in this retro action programmer.

“If you try ruining my sister’s happiness you will be missing a head,” growls the fiercely bearded Punjabi action hero Sunny Deol midway through his new thunderous headbanger, “Singh Saab the Great.” Although he’s pushing 60, Deol still has the broad-shouldered physique, belligerent attitude and extensive collection of color-coordinated turbans needed to make a convincing Sikh superhero — which is effectively how writer-director Anil Sharma portrays him, tossing bad guys across parking lots and through walls in super-slow-motion bullet-time action sequences. At home, the pic collected a decent but unspectacular $1.4 million in its first two days.

Deol’s brawny righter of wrongs and defender of the weak is initially a man with no name, referred to only as Singh Saab. He works as a collector, a federal administrator in a district responsible for tax assessment and licensing, obviously fertile soil for government corruption. Several characters assume that Singh Saab (a corruption of sahib or master)  is that kind of collector and bring bulging envelopes of cash to their meetings with him, only to be rebuffed. Singh is honest to a fault and he keeps stepping on the wrong toes, or at least increasing their tax rate.

In due course a persistent TV journalist (Amrita Rao) uncovers this mysterious hero’s backstory. Almost two decades earlier, in another district, working beardless and under his real name, Saranjit Talwar, Singh ran into a conflict with the evil Bhoodev (Prakash Raj), a local businessman/godfather. After the death of his beloved wife (Urvashi Rautela), Singh was framed for bribery and sent to prison, emerging 16 years later as an anti-corruption crusader with a side arm and growing national organization, a man whose every Hulk-like footstep shakes the earth.

Bollywood movies have been accused for a while now of becoming “gentrified,” that they are increasingly aimed at the affluent middle class and that producers no longer understand what the big Indian audience wants. If that’s the case, the recent wave of hugely popular South Indian-inflected action films (which began with Salman Khan’s “Wanted” in 2009) could be seen as a backlash against endless smirking romantic comedies about well-heeled twentysomethings in Delhi.

Action movies are one thing: They offer simple values and spectacle, and deliver catharsis. What’s amazing about these new films is how old-fashioned they are, as if the filmmakers were deliberately turning back the clock. “Singh Saab the Great” feels like a fully conscious masala throwback, complete with iconic ’80 and ’90s comic-relief specialist Johnny Lever, continuing his recent comeback in a gesticulating sidekick role. As Bhoodev, Raj makes long, florid villainous speeches that seem to have been recorded in an echo chamber — shades of the late, great Amrish Puri, the ultimatemasala meanie. Bodies are pierced one minute and eyes fill with tears the next, and then we dance.

Film Review: 'Singh Saab the Great'

Reviewed at AMC Orange 30, Orange, Calif., Nov. 23, 2013. Running-time: 147 MIN.

Production

(India) An Eros Intl. release of an Alumbra Entertainment and Pen Movies presentation in association with Shantketan Entertainments. Produced by Sangeetha Ahir, Anuj Sharma. Executive producer Sunil Sharma.

Crew

Directed by Anil Sharma. Screenplay, Shaktimaan Talwar. Camera (color), S. Gopinath; editor, Ashfaq Makrani; music, Anand Raj Anand, Sonu Nigam (title song); choreographers, Chinni Prakash, Rekha Prakash; production design, Jayant Deshmukh; stunts, Tinnu Verma, Kanal Kannan.

With

Sunny Deol, Amrita Rao, Prakash Raj, Johnny Lever, Urvashi Rautela, Saranjeet Singh, Anjali Abrol. (Hindi, Bengali dialogue)

FILED UNDER:

 

• Amrita Rao
• Bollywood
• Sunny Deol

SINGH SAAB THE GREAT REVIEW

Singh Saab The Great Movie Review

Singh Saab is Sunny Deol who has instituted a ‘People’s Party’ to clean up the system. Giving his ‘People’s Party’ a big boost from the media side is Amrita Rao who plays a journalist looking out for Breaking News. And Sunny Deol pulls off all the action scenes with élan. The narrative, however, stretches and the plot at most times is all too predictable.

Singh Sahab the Great Theatrical poster

It is a story about a common man, who takes pride in his honesty. His needs and wants in life are less, he has a small close knit family and he believes that his work is his worship. Saranjeet Singh 'Sunny' is a simple man who loves his family and values truth and believes in its triumphs. He has lived his life endorsing the good and its strength over evil.

The corruption, injustice, confusion due to inefficient system in the society has always bothered since his childhood and so he has become a collector so that he can bring in the change in the society and put things in order. But life takes its turns and he pays the price for doing no harm to anyone individually but for standing up for honesty. His life goes hay wire as he has to choose between his wife and his belief system. He loses his wife even after he helplessly decides to compromise with his values. This is killing him inside. Revenge is all he is thinking of. He ends up in jail. Amidst all this turbulence he meets an old time friend who comes to the same jail as the jailor. A small conversation with him makes him realize that his fight is not against an individual but against a big whole part of the society today who, blinded by selfishness, have lost the difference between the right and wrong.

This changes Singh's thought process and he decides to bring in the change instead of taking revenge. In this campaign of his he is supported selflessly by a crime journalist, Shikha, who has utmost respect for him. Through this movie, we are trying to spread the message that 'Change Is Always Better Than Revenge'. ('Badla nahin, badlaav'). Through the protagonist of the story, Sunny, we are trying to make viewers/audience realize that 'World suffers a lot, not because of bad people's violence; but because of good people's silence.' The common men, when united are neither common nor helpless. Singh uses this as his strength and starts his fight against the corruption, injustice, bad and wrongs and ultimately wins one battle, and moves on to another city which needs someone to make common men realize their strength.

RAM-LEELA

As delightful a proposition as "a Bollywood Romeo & Juliet" sounds at first glance, there still remains the question of execution. "Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela" (or "Ram-Leela" for short), the film in question, fits neatly within what one  might expect from director Sanjay Leela Bhansali's literary adaptations—the most widely-known in the West probably being 2002's "Devdas" with Shahrukh Khan, Madhuri Dixit, andAishwarya Rai—a visually opulent, proudly melodramatic entertainer with some great songs and star performances.

The scene is laid in fair Gujarat, in northwest India, where two rival clans have been warring for some 500 years and find themselves, in the present day, presiding over competing criminal empires, and spend their days armed to the teeth in open conflict in the streets of their village. The heir apparent to the poorer of the two clans, Ram (Ranveer Singh), disdains the gun violence that takes up so much of their day-to-day existence, preferring to hang out with his buddies and sell porn DVDs. One fateful day Ram sees, and instantly falls in love with, his female counterpart in the rival clan, Leela (Deepika Padukone). The feeling is very much mutual, and, per "Romeo and Juliet," the lovers have to deal with the conflict between their respective families, and the repercussions of skirmishes between them.

Bhansali hews fairly close to Shakespeare in the first half of the film, peppering the dialogue with references to the play and even including some exchanges in rhymed verse. After the intermission, he makes the wise decision to depart somewhat from the basic template, at the risk of a dip in pace, but which builds a considerable amount of suspense in the lead up the climax; even if you know "Romeo and Juliet" like the back of your hand, Bhansali's shift into more of a traditional warring-clans masala story introduces no small degree of uncertainty about how it's all going to end, which is quite the achievement with a text as familiar as "R&J."

What makes the ride as enjoyable as it is, and what truly give focus to Bhansali's lush, colorful compositions, are the performances of Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone in the leads. Singh prevails over a very odd (even by masala hero standards) mustache to give a deeply affecting and rich performance as Ram, but it's Padukone, as is increasingly the case, who steals the show with pure, deliberate, ferocious star power. The striking thing about her performance as Leela is how tightly coiled and tense it seems; she's ready at a moment's notice to kiss or kill (or both), never passive, never merely a photographic subject. The physical vitality of her work in the film is almost unfair to Priyanka Chopra, who cameos in an item number. Quite the movie star in her own right, Chopra seems insubstantial compared to Padukone, who's very close—if she isn't there already—to becoming the star among stars in her generation. Her every gesture is fascinating. She forces Singh to dial up his own not inconsequential star power in the scenes they share, which leads to a situation where we get to watch two wildly attractive actors giving their absolute all and meshing terrifically from a chemistry standpoint. If that sounds like fun, it most certainly is.

There are a couple of script and pacing hiccups in "Ram-Leela," most notably a regretful backsliding into regressive, lazy use of threatened rape as a means of heightening dramatic stakes. This is all the more unfortunate because Leela's family, run by her terrifying mother (an extraordinary Supriya Pathak), is a matriarchal criminal empire where the men, however much they may preen, absolutely defer. The pacing also dips rather badly in the middle and whenever Ram and Leela are separated, since from a dramatic standpoint their tandem star power is the engine that makes the whole thing run.

Those caveats aside, visual splendor and hot-blooded melodrama mostly win out over rickety pacing and scripting. Bhansali makes strong use of visual signifiers, particularly guns, which are introduced immediately and pervade throughout, and which in spite of being wielded by literally almost everyone in the film are never treated casually. There is always great import to the way in which guns are held and used, and the effects of their use are never elided. The other main recurring reference, skewering male vanity and pride gently though unsubtly, is to peacocks, which make a number of rhetorical and physical appearances. And so "Ram-Leela" is a handsomely-crafted entertainer with both smarts and heart, featuring two knockout lead performances, great songs, and plenty of the good kind of tears.

Ramleela poster

Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela (English: A Play of Bullets: Ram-Leela) is a 2013 Hindi romantic-drama film directed and produced by Sanjay Leela Bhansali. It stars Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone as the eponymous leads. The film is an adaptation ofShakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, set in violent times.^[1][4][5] The film's release, scheduled on 15 November 2013,^[6] has been stayed by Delhi High Court. The film was initially titled Ram-Leela but was changed to Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela in response to an order by the Delhi High Court^[7] and released as scheduled. The film earned generally positive reviews and opened to strong box office collections worldwide.^[8] The film was declared a 'Hit' in India and 'Super hit' overseas by Box Office India.^[9][10]

The movie is inspired by William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.^[11]

In a Gujarati village, Ranjaar, infamous for its uninhibited manufacture and sale of arms and ammunition (weapons are sold like vegetables at the place), two clans, Rajari and Sanera, have been at odds with each other for the past 500 years. The film opens with a violent altercation between the two over petty matters. Meghji (Abhimanyu Singh), a Rajari head, sets out to kill Bhavani (Gulshan Devaiah) who is a Suneda, after the latter tries to kill the former's son. Bhavani is almost killed when Ram (Ranveer Singh) intervenes and saves him, only to be reprimanded by Meghji, who is his elder brother. All the Rajari elders are irked by Ram's mindset of making truce with the other clan.

During the festival of Holi, Ram boldly enters the house of the Sunera heads and frolics with Leela (Deepika Padukone), while her mother, Dhankor baa (Supriya Pathak), the chieftain of the Saneras, is busy arranging a match for her daughter.

Kanji, Leela's elder brother, angered by Ram's entry in the house, bribes the local policeman to raid of the house of Rajari heads, but the plan backfires with Ram's tactics. Ram and Leela get romantically involved and plan to elope. But a grim turn of events follows when Kanji accidentally kills Meghji, and is in turn killed by Ram.

In order to escape the suffering, Ram and Leela elope and marry. But Ram's friends trace them and trick Ram by making him drunk and knock him out of his senses, and send an SMS about their location to the Saneras from Ram's phone. The next morning, Leela is forcibly taken back home by Bhavani, her cousin, while Ram is hailed as a hero by the Rajaris for soiling the reputation of Leela, and her chieftain.

Leela still retains faith in Ram and sends Rasila (Richa Chadda), widow of kanji, to give Ram an ultimatum to take her away. She, however is molested by Ram's friends and when Dhankor baa learns of this, she sends Bhavani and other men to assault Kesar (Barkha Bisht Sengupta), Meghji's widow.

Ram storms into Leela's house and incapacitates the guards single-handed. He then requests Dhankor baa to consider negotiation for peace, following which she invites him for a function at home with the intention to kill Ram. However, at the event, Bhavani secretly shoots and seriously injures Dhankor, and the Rajaris are blamed for attacking Dhankor baa.

Leela is made the chieftain and gets busy tending to her mother. Ram and Leela bitterly carry out a negotiation with the sarpanch but Bhavani manipulates things and makes Leela blindly sign a document ordering the killings of Rajaris.

During Dusshera, as the Ramlila parade is ending, many Rajaris are killed and the village is on the brink of war. Ram senses this and goes to Leela and suggests that they kill each other instead of dying fighting. Leela agrees and both commit suicide, not knowning that Dhankor baa has undergone a change of heart and has killed Bhavani, ordering peace be meted out to the other clan.

In the end, the two clans finally unite and cremate the dead bodies of Ram and Leela together respectfully.

Goliyon Ki Rasleela Ram-Leela (2013)

Director Mr. Sanjay Leela Bhansali ,is known for taking the scenes far more ahead from screenplay by adding visual magic and he succeeds to create the magic again. He is also master of portraying emotions but this movie lacks his masterstroke. Story is simple, screenplay is OK but dialogues by Siddharth-Garima , are very good mostly. Movie is slow at places even belonging to the action drama romantic genre. Climax is forced because of adaptation. Love scenes are best as usual. Director has given his 200% to conceiving the visuals that he couldn't give his 100% to the emotions. Characters are not well established. A women, who is able to remove bullet from her most loved one person's dead body, possess soft heart!! How!? A person goes to the deadly enemy's house without proper disguise or any other precautions. Even , he can intrude with the help of a tree trunk.Guns are the most common things between them but in pre climax they fight with swords! Main male lead body is deliberately over exposed, which doesn't go well with the premise of the movie, where rest of the person prefers to cover themselves. Performance wise Ranveer Singh is OK but lacks in most of the emotional scenes. Deepika Padukone is adorable. He slaves you to look at herself in every frame. Ratna Pathak is impressive. Richa Chaddha is fine. Music by director himself is OK but lyrics by Siddharth-Garima is very good.