Singham

Director – Rohit Shetty

Producer – Reliance Entertainment

Lyrics – Swanand Kirkire

Music – Ajay-Atul

Cast – Ajay Devgn, Kaajal Agarwal, Prakash Raj, Ashok Saraf, Sonali Kulkarni, Sachin Khedekar, Suchitra Bandekar, Govind Namdev, Vijay Patkar and others.

          Bollywood, of late, is short of sensible scripts. So the easiest way is to take any Southern blockbuster, make reasonable changes, add North Indian spices and throw it to the audience. You feel one Manmohan Desai is reborn, but somewhere in the South. Wanted (2009) started a new trend of Masala films made purely for the sake of entertainment. Rohit Shetty’s ‘Singham’ helps Ajay Devgn to enter this competition of absolute nonsense started by Salman Khan.

          Singham is a remake of the hit Tamil film Singam which had Surya Shivakumar as the protagonist Durai Singam. Now what exactly do you mean by the word Singam?? It’s the Tamil word for ‘Lion’. There is no such word as ’Singham’ in Marathi/Konkani (The backdrop is set in Goa). As such the name ‘Bajirao Singham’ (name of the protagonist) in the remake tells you that the director is short on his research.

          The plot is highly predictable from the beginning. An honest cop Kadam’s (Sudhanshu Pandey) death shatters his wife (Sonali Kulkarni). A local goon Jaykant Shikre (Prakash Raj) is responsible for it. She runs hither and thither for justice but gets nothing in return. Meanwhile Bajirao Singham (Ajay Devgn) is another honest cop in a village near the Goa-Maharashtra border. He has his own methods of dealing with cases and in due course gets involved with Shikre. His struggle to eliminate Shikre and give justice to Kadam forms rest of the story.

          The film is dominated by Ajay Devgn from beginning to end . So you’ll love it if you’re his true fan. I felt Ajay should’ve spent some time learning Marathi from Kajol (his ‘Phakta’ sounds like ‘Waqt’ and he can’t even say ‘Aaichya Gaawat’ properly). Kaajal Agarwal has no role to play. She’s given negligible screen space as compared to Anushka Shetty in the Tamil version. So Singham can’t be called her rebirth in Bollywood (remember Kyun!! Ho Gaya na??) However Prakash Raj is perfect in his portrayal of Shikre. You ‘love to hate him’. He gives you the funniest moments in the film followed by Ashok Saraf. Sachin Khedekar is the worst. I think money was the sole factor which made him accept the idiotic  role of Gautam Bhonsle alias ‘Gotya’. Other supports can be termed as special appearances.

            Rohit Shetty has made a lame attempt to portray Bajirao Singham as a  Maratha warrior from a Goan village. The script by Yunus Sajawal is weak on facts. Firstly,  Goan police don’t wear Khakee uniforms. Their uniform consists of a blue trouser and white shirt.  Secondly, Goans don’t wear the Gandhi topi which is common amongst rural Maharashrtians. Thirdly rural Goans speak Konkani and not Marathi; the Marathi population is limited. (Except ‘Aaicha Gho’ there’s no Konkani. Rests is Marathi) In one scene you can see Ajay Devgn wearing the cap of an IPS officer whereas the badge on his arms has the initials ‘GP’ which stand for Goa Police.

Several new scenes have been added to suit the Hindi audience. Overall, direction is poor but Rohit gets full marks for action sequences. Music by Ajay-Atul is average. The dhol-tasha is getting repetitive. The song ‘Saathiya’ makes an exception. Some scenes in Goa look exotic on the big screen due to the excellent cinematography. Other technical aspects need not be mentioned. 

          

         Thus Singham is just a one-time watch. If you love the ‘woosh-woosh’ sound after every punch then this film is definitely your cup of tea. Else just trash it altogether. I’d suggest you better see Singam in its original Tamil version. Its more entertaining and more fun than Hindi. I go with two stars out of five for Rohit Shetty’s ‘Singham’. He’s let you down after a fun filled ‘Golmaal 3’.