Hindi
A dated plot of honest cop vs corrupt politicians
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Producer: Reliance Entertainment |
MUMBAI: Singham is the remake of Reliance Entertainment‘s own Tamil film of the same name. While in Tamil the title translates as Lion, here it means nothing in particular but retained as surname for Ajay Devgn‘s screen name, Bajirao Singham. That is fine but why does a whole village including the protagonist, Ajay Devgn‘s father in the film, address him by his surname?
The theme seems to be: Anything goes. South remakes usually seem to work very well at the box office holding appeal for both, the multiplex as well as the single screen audience, as has been seen by the universal acceptance and success of Ghajini, Wanted, Ready, etc.
Singham follows the old fashioned honest cop vs. corrupt politicians theme and the name coined for this genre is ‘retro film‘.
So there is this honest to core police officer, Ajay Devgn, who is posted in his native town called Shivgad on the edge of Goa state who settles all local disputes amicably rather than with the use of law. He has earned the love and respect of all and soon that of a girl also. He has had time to just prance around woods and imagine a romantic song when it is time to be a real man; He crosses paths with the scoundrel of scoundrels, killer, kidnapper, wannabe politician, the all powerful Prakash Raj.
Ajay Devgn draws first blood, humiliating and cutting Prakash Raj down to size after calling him to his police station. The latter decides to shift the war to his turf and, thankfully, the film shifts to more watchable locales of Goa. The battles of one-upmanship are fought in true loud and gory style of South Indian films where villains never travel in a single car, they have a cavalcade of a dozen cars of the same model and colour; you could not have missed it if you have seen even a single South film.
Ajay Devgn‘s action scenes are backed by the title chant of ‘Singham……Singham…‘ as he resorts to various kinds of somersaults and dives and as the cars go bouncing around in the air like tennis balls in the guise of stunts.
The problem with Singham is, for its 2 hours and 24 minutes, all it has to offer is raw action and stunts which can get tiring after some time. There is little in the name of distractions. The film lacks romance, emotions, comedy and music. The claptrap dialogue which should go with this kind of action film are few and far in between.
Director Rohit Shetty, having chosen a South film to remake, has stuck to the South look rather than polish it up in his own style. Also, the Marathi background was unnecessary! His action design is becoming very identifiable and looks similar to his earlier films.
The film is basically an Ajay Devgn physique and action showcase vehicle and that is how having started his career as an action hero in Phool Aur Kaante, Ajay has only improved several notches in both, physique as well as action.
Prakash Raj is getting more and more repetitive and his same turning comic at the end shatters the villain‘s image created through the film. Kajal Aggarwal, the leading lady, has but few scenes in a film that could very well have done without her. Among others, Sachin Khedekar, Govind Namdeo, Ashok Saraf, Anant Jog and Murli Sharma give good support.
Singham has had a better opening response at single screens and Hindi belt circuits while not making a much needed impact at metro multiplexes. Considering that multiplexes contribute a sizeable chunk to a film‘s box office takings, so much the worse for this film.
Hindi
Remembering Gyan Sahay, the lens behind film, television and advertising
From a puppet rabbit selling poppadums to Hindi cinema, he framed it all.
MUMBAI: There are careers, and then there are canvases. Gyan Sahay, the veteran cinematographer, director, and producer who passed away on 10 March 2026 in Mumbai, had one of the latter. Over several decades in the Indian film and television industry, he turned lenses, lights, and the occasional puppet rabbit into something approaching art.
A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Sahay built his reputation as a director of photography across a career that stretched from the early 1970s all the way to the digital age. He was the kind of craftsman who understood that a well-composed shot is not merely a technical achievement but a quiet act of storytelling.
For most Indians of a certain age, however, Sahay will forever be the man behind the rabbit. His direction of the iconic long-running television commercial for Lijjat Papad, featuring its now-legendary puppet bunny, gave the country one of its most cheerfully persistent advertising images. It was the sort of work that sneaks into the national subconscious and takes up permanent residence.
His big-screen credits as cinematographer include Anokhi Pehchan (1972), Pagli (1974), Pas de Deux (1981), and Hum Farishte Nahin (1988). In 1999, he stepped behind a different kind of camera altogether, making his directorial debut with Sar Ankhon Par, a drama that featured Vikas Bhalla and Shruti Ulfat, with a cameo by Shah Rukh Khan for good measure.
On television, Sahay was particularly prized for his command of multi-camera production setups, a skill that made him a go-to technician for large-scale shows and reality programmes. In an industry that has never been especially patient with complexity, he was the calm hand on the rig.
In later life, Sahay turned teacher. He participated regularly in masterclasses and Digi-Talks, often hosted by organisations such as Bharatiya Chitra Sadhna, sharing hard-won wisdom on cinematography, the comedy of timing in a shot, and the sweeping changes brought by the shift from celluloid to digital. He was also said to have been involved in a project concerning a biographical film on Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy.
Tributes from the film industry poured in following the news of his passing, with colleagues remembering him as a senior cameraman who served as a rare bridge between two entirely different eras of Indian cinema. That is, perhaps, the finest thing one can say of any craftsman: he kept up, and he brought others along with him.
