Sholay (1975)
★★★★½ — Sholay (1975)
Few films in world cinema carry the cultural weight that Sholay does in India. Released in 1975, Ramesh Sippy's action epic arrived at a moment when Hindi popular cinema was beginning to find a bolder, more muscular identity, and the film both reflected and accelerated that shift. The story follows former police inspector Thakur Baldev Singh, who, having suffered a devastating personal loss at the hands of the feared bandit Gabbar Singh, recruits two small-time crooks, Jai and Veeru, to bring the outlaw to justice. It is a premise with obvious debts to the Hollywood westerns and samurai films that were circulating widely in the early 1970s, and Sippy wears those influences openly, transplanting the dusty frontier mythology of those genres into the rocky, sun-baked landscape of rural Rajasthan. The result is something that feels borrowed and entirely its own at the same time. If you want a sense of what Indian cinema was producing elsewhere in that same decade, the site's review of A Throw of Dice offers a much earlier point of comparison, while RRR shows how that tradition of large-scale, emotionally generous Indian action filmmaking has carried forward into the present.
Sippy produced the film through Sippy Films, and its three-hour-plus runtime (198 minutes in its original cut) signals from the outset that this is not a film in any hurry. The scale of the production was considerable for Indian cinema of the period, and the ambition shows in the choreography of its set pieces and the care taken with its Deccan landscape locations. The script, by Salim-Javed (the writing duo Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar), gave the film a structure that moves between broad comedy, romance, and outright tragedy with a confidence that few mainstream productions of any era manage cleanly. Javed Akhtar and Salim Khan were at something close to the peak of their partnership here, and the screenplay remains studied in Indian film schools to this day.
The cast assembled is genuinely remarkable. Dharmendra and Amitabh Bachchan play Veeru and Jai respectively, and their chemistry is the engine the whole film runs on. Bachchan, who was already becoming one of the dominant presences in Hindi cinema, brings a cool, watchful quality to Jai that offsets Dharmendra's broader, more physical performance as Veeru. Sanjeev Kumar plays the Thakur with a quiet gravity that anchors the film's more serious passages. And then there is Amjad Khan as Gabbar Singh, delivering a villain so vivid and quotable that lines from his performance have become part of everyday Indian cultural vocabulary in the fifty years since. Hema Malini rounds out the principal cast as Basanti, a role that gave the film some of its most celebrated comic sequences. For a further sense of the kind of action cinema being made in other parts of the world around the same time, the review of Westworld is worth a look, and for a more recent benchmark in large-scale action filmmaking, the site's take on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon sits nearby on the shelf.
Me and my best friend watched this with his parents. Initially... we were rolling on the floor laughing. It starts off insanely goofy and odd. Something I'm entirely not used to as a westerner. By the end... and its a long long movie... it's a beautiful and touching story of brotherhood and of two best friends. The "coin" gag has been replicated many times now. I'm by no means an expert but of the bollywood films I've seen this stands head and shoulders above.
I think that experience of starting out baffled and ending up genuinely moved is actually the ideal way to come to Sholay, and watching it with people who love it adds something you cannot manufacture. The tonal whiplash in the early going is real, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise, but Sippy and the cast earn every minute of that runtime by the time the credits roll. The coin gag in particular has taken on a life of its own for good reason. It is one of those simple, elegant pieces of character work that says more in thirty seconds than most films manage in two hours. If this is the film that opens the door to Bollywood for you, you have stumbled into a very good room to start in.
Rating: ★★★★½ | Year: 1975 | Watched: 2025-04-13
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Sholay (1975) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: ITVX Premium
Rent: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon US
Affiliate disclosure: Movies With Macca may earn a small commission on purchases or subscriptions started via these links. It costs you nothing extra.
Related on Movies With Macca
More from India: A Throw of Dice (1929) · Need for Speed (2014) · RRR (2022) · The Padma Boatman (1993)
More from the 1970s: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Here and Elsewhere (1976) · Italianamerican (1974) · Punishment Park (1971)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)
