Sholay

Sholay ("Embers") is the biggest hit in Indian cinema history, a Bollywood film from 1975 directed by Ramesh Sippy and featuring Amitabh Bachchan, one of the most famous actors in the business.

The plot features Bachchan and Dharmendra as Jai and Veeru, two former thieves hired by Baldev Singh (Sanjeev Kumar), a former police officer who is the thakur (major landowner) of a small rural village. Their mission is to capture the infamous bandit and Complete Monster Gabbar Singh, against whom Thakur has a personal grudge. On the way they have plenty of hijinks and even fall in love, Jai with Thakur's widowed daughter-in-law Radha and Veeru with the chatty horse cart driver Basanti (Hema Malini).

It has an unauthorized remake in 2007, titled Aag ("Flames"), who despite an All-Star Cast (including bringing back Bachchan, this time to play the Gabbar Singh equivalent role) and an actual budget, is considered extremely embarrasing.


 * Badass Grandpa: Thakur is this in the flashbacks
 * Belligerent Sexual Tension: Veeru and Basanti's relationship is made of this
 * Big Damn Heroes:
 * Broken Bird: Radha. We first see her as a melancholic, taciturn woman who tries to convince the protagonists to get away while they still can. In the flashbacks from before she was married and from when her husband was alive, she was shown a a vivacious, playful young woman.
 * Bromance: the first song in the movie has Jai and Veeru sing about their undying love for each other and how they'll always stick together.
 * Complete Monster: Despite countless rip-offs and parodies, Gabbar is chilling especially
 * The Determinator: surprisingly, Basanti, given that she's essentially the comic relief.
 * Dying Like Mice: After Gabbar murders the timid Ahmed as a warning, the villagers all turn against Jai and Veeru, and are ready to turn them over to Gabbar until the old blind imam, whose son it was who had just been killed, berates them for capitulating to evil.
 * Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Thakur Baldev Singh is known mostly by his title "thakur" rather than his actual name
 * Faux Affably Evil: Gabbar Singh
 * Executive Meddling: the Indian film board made Sippy cut the scene where the massacred members of Thaku's family were shown and re-shoot the ending so that . Recent editions of the movie have had the cut scenes and original ending put back in.
 * Evil Laugh: Gabbar
 * Genki Girl: Basanti
 * Handicapped Badass: Thakur is made of this trope. Arguably the most physically imposing character in the film, despite the fact he has no arms. Especially played up in his final showdown with Gabbar,
 * Heroic Sacrifice:
 * Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Jaya (playing Radha) is a rather petite woman, and Amitabh, her real life husband and her onscreen love interest, is over six feet tall.
 * Item number: "Mehbooba Mehbooba", featuring Helen.
 * Meaningful Name: Veeru and Jai (real name Jaidev)'s names mean "Virtue" and "Heroism". Initially Ironic Names due to them being criminals.
 * Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Veeru goes on one of these after
 * Real Life Relative: Jaya Badhuri, who plays Amitabh's love interest, was already married to him when they filmed this, and she was pregnant with one of their children.
 * Romance on the Set: Dharmendra and Hema had worked together before, and she has sometimes claimed that she had a crush on him before she started working in films, but this was the project where they truly fell in love.
 * Romancing the Widow: Jai's love interest is Thakur's widowed daughter-in-law
 * Russian Roulette: A variation of it in the You Have Failed Me... scene where Kaalia returns with 2 other mooks.
 * Sleeper Hit: At the time of its premiere it didn't have much success, due to being under-promoted and having had bad initial bad reviews, but due to mouth-to-mouth recommendation the audience began to increase by the third week and then went to become the biggest blockbuster of 1975.
 * Those Two Guys: Jai and Veeru of course, to the point of becoming a part of Indian culture.
 * Those Two Actors: This was part of a long, long string of films that Dharmendra and Hema made together.
 * Those Wacky Nazis: while not actual nazis appear, there is a lengthy sequence of Jai and Veeru in prison outsmarting a prison ward that has a very suspicious similitude to both Adolf Hitler and his expy from The Great Dictator.
 * What You Are in the Dark: the reason Thakur decided to hire Jai and Veeru to solve the Gabbar Singh problem despite their criminal record: back when Thakur was still a policeman, he arrested them and was escorting them to prison when the train they were traveling was attacked by bandits. Rather than use the attack to escape and leave the policeman to his luck, both friends went into fighting the bandits and defending the train, delaying their escape until after they were out of Thakur's custody.
 * What Could Have Been: Because of the initial bad reception, the producers speculated it was for its bittersweet ending so they planned to reshoot the ending . The sudden increase in audience thwarted that plan.
 * You Have Failed Me...: Gabbar Singh pulls this with three of his underlings: he takes a gun with six bullets, fires off three, and then spins the chambers and pulls the trigger at each man. Miraculously, all three escape alive. . Video here.
 * You Have Failed Me...: Gabbar Singh pulls this with three of his underlings: he takes a gun with six bullets, fires off three, and then spins the chambers and pulls the trigger at each man. Miraculously, all three escape alive. . Video here.