At some point since the last time I tried to find one, a decent copy of 1975's Sholay was finally released. It's considered one of the greatest Bollywood movies of all time but for years I was only able to find pan-and-scan or only partially subtitled, low quality widescreen copies of the film. But now there's a big special edition, apparently based on a 3D release. It has new foley and a few cgi objects that fly at the screen but these things are relatively minimal and what we have is the purest copy of the film available for home viewing in decades. Possibly the first since the film was originally released. And it's a gas.
Two happy-go-lucky thieves, Veeru and Jai (Dharmendra and Amitabh Bachchan) are enlisted by a former police officer (Sanjeev Kumar) to wage war against a group of bandits led by the vile Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan). With the promise of decent pay, Veeru and Jai head off to the little town living in fear of Singh's gang.
They both get love interests in town. Jai is the serious one, so he catches the eye of a melancholy widow (Jaya Bhaduri) while Veeru, the funny one, is ensnared by the lively Basanti (Hema Malini), who is not a chatterbox at all.
All of the stars are perfectly cast and everyone has a lot of charisma.
Things become steadily more violent and the story takes some surprisingly grim turns. Basanti remains the standout character throughout, if you ask me, but Veeru and Jai are pretty good in the action sequences.
There are several nice songs but I think my favourite is this one in the bandit camp:
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