Sholay (1975)'s comments - page 2

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Paravail

Cigarette Smoking is injurious to health.

4 years 2 months ago

Not knowing much about Sholay beforehand, I was positively surprised to get basically an Indian spaghetti adventure with some good-looking camera shots and only a couple of Bollywood singing numbers, which actually were alright and gave the film an interesting touch together with the overall music.

Quite cool - if it weren't over 200 fucking minutes long. It's ridiculous, because there wasn't so much plot to speak of, and drags everything down. There's a solid entertaining movie of 2h15 length hidden in here.
On a plus side, by the end of the movie I already completely forgot the bizarrely lousy spoiler

scene. What the hell.

3 years 6 months ago

Windill

Okay...ish...
But yes: overrated.
Not even a good movie.
Just ok.
And you will laugh a couple times at the expense of the whole thing.

3 years 4 months ago

Siskoid

It clocks in at more than 3 hours, but I was never distracted away from Sholay (which translates as Embers), a Bollywood epic about a retired police inspector hiring two trickster-like criminals with hearts of gold to defend his village from bandit attacks and capture their leader, responsible for the death of his family. Shot like a western, shootouts give way to crazy musical numbers, and broad comedy turns into effective tragedy at the drop of a hat. This is everything to everyone and it shouldn't work, but it does. Its greatest triumph is introducing an annoying comedy character, then making her the most touching and interesting figure in the film, leading to the most suspenseful dance number you're ever likely to see on film. The action is by turns clever, fun, immediate and visceral (even the goofy 3D effects added in 2013 seem to have their place), and while the comedy is sometimes a bit broad and the drama bordering on melodrama, I felt completely sandbagged by the end, restless, teary and incapable of immediately going to bed. Aside from the prison hi-jinks at the beginning, there's really nothing superfluous in Sholay, as even the most innocuous choice or subplot eventually delivers and becomes important to the plot. So three hours or not, I'd gladly watch this one again, and I wish my other experiences with Bollywood pictures were more like it.

2 years 9 months ago

Matt Addis

Flawed, and as many have pointed out, way too long. Yet despite its rocky beginning and cringy attempts at comedy there are some great scenes of drama and suspense. It borrows liberally from other famous westerns (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Magnificent Seven, etc.) but doesn't really feel derivative. Plus it has an excellent soundtrack. All in all, despite its shortcomings, a pretty good film.

2 years 5 months ago