"Singham" Review

"Singham" Review

7/10

2011
A Rohit Shetty Film
Protagonist(s): Ajay Devgan, Kajal Aggarwal
Antagonist(s): Prakash Raj
Run-time: 2 hours 22 minutes

When an honest policeman is made to kill himself events are set in motion to allow a merciless defender of justice to step in and clean up by fair means or foul.

My first words on the film should be a warning; if you see this film, then you will for at least two hours after the film has ended get the strong urge to say or hear the name Singham, as it is repeated every few moments throughout the film as a sort of running theme whenever he does something cool, which according to the amount of slow motion shots used is all the time.

That said, I will reiterate that slow motion is used frequently, easily padding the run-time of the film with half an hour if not more. But the awesome effects and camera angles more than make up for that.

Contrary to many other Bollywood films I have seen, this film is not stuffed to the gills with music videos where the hero and love interest frolic and express their emotions in ways that their cinematic selves cannot. There are three. One to introduce Singham as the ultimate good guy; an intersecting point between Judge Dredd, Frank Castle, Gandhi, and Tony Jaa. The second is as previously described a romantic romp which has absolutely no impact on the story whatsoever. The third is the same, yet surprisingly short and ends quite suddenly.

What confuses me is the leaps in logic and emotions which occur seemingly at random. It could be that this is a cultural matter to get to the meat of the story rather than beating about the bush, or it could be that the writer just wanted to get it all out while he remembered it and forgot to go back and flesh it out. Regardless, with as much awesomeness as presented in this film, one does not need to make sense.

One irksome detail did cause me to further deduce points; while it is true that the best way to fight fire is with fire, it does not sit well with me that a police force accused of corruption blatantly ignore the letter and intent of the law to kill admitted bad guys. One or two rogue policemen, certainly. But the entire city's police force? Framing the bad guy and fumbling badly with staging the evidence to fit their proposed scenario. While not a scholar on political sciences, I would say that this is most definitely a Police State, where rather than a fair trial the villain is slain, and where due process is ignored in favour of the end result.

Regardless, I recommend this film if you feel like enjoying excellent effects at a lower budget, and violent awesomeness padded with some mandatory sappy scenes.