Direction: Anil Sharma
Rating: **1/2
After remaining dormant on the action front finally the "real man" of Bollywood, Sunny Deol returns with a roar of "badla nahi badlav", the intent on which lies the whole premise of "Singh Saab The Great", a narration which apprises you with the story of a righteous man who after getting ruined by a corrupt system decides to become a parallel messiah to get things on track.
And for the aforementioned purpose, with "Singh Saab The Great", Sunny has once again teamed up with his "Gadar- Ek Prem Katha" and "Apne" companion, Anil Sharma.
Starring Sunny Deol, Urvashi Rautela, Prakash Raj, Johny Lever, Anjali Abrol the movie opened with an average occupancy and fetched a foot-fall of around 25 percent, with majority of viewers belonging to Sunny's die hard fan fraternity who love to see this super-machismo roaring on the big screen and giving a good taste of his "Dhaai Kilo Ka Haath" oops... I mean "Saade Tin Kilo Ka Haath" to his opponents.
Over the years, whenever Anil and Sunny have teamed up together, it's often seen that the results have been beyond the realm of excellence and with "Singh Saab The Great" the duo once again seems to aiming for the same.
As far as premise of "Singh Saab The Great" is concerned, then then it narrates the story of an honest collector, Sharinder Singh Talwar (Sunny Deol) who has got an adherence to righteousness and firmly believes in performing his duties meticulously. But as it is an unsaid mandate in Bollywood, that such virtuous and honest officer needs to have a tryst with a corrupt goon, so even our very Singh Saab doesn't emerges as an exception to the thumb rule and subsequently have an unholy rendezvous with a corrupt power hungry goon Bhoodev( Prakash Raj), whose words are no less than law of the land in the sub urban milieu.
What follows next is the false implication of, Sharinder Singh in a bribery case and imprisonment. Post which Shrainder comes out as Singh Saab, who instead of taking his revenge (badla) is more inclined towards bringing in the change (badlav) in the existing epidemic ridden socio-political system. So in order to know how Singh Saab gets his wish executed watch "Singh Saab The Great".
With a clinched script which has already been over used in the past, on the story front "Singh Saab The Great" has nothing novel in the offering, so with an excessively high predictability there is nothing much to praise about scriptwriter Shaktiman who have failed in coming out with some attention grabbing premise. And with an overdone or rather hackneyed script, the entire responsibility of creating a captivating cine-saga entirely falls in the responsibility realm of screenplay and other technical aspects. But even on that front up-till an extent "Singh Sahab The Great" falls short of expectation.
But yeah as far as dialogues are concerned then they are certainly full of impact, than other components configured in this cine delight so for that, Shaktiman scores some brownie points.
Whereas if we talk about editing then even that's seems to be a bit loose, because although it's the human factor or rather the emotional values which usually play a major in Sunny Deol, starrers, but in the absence of a neatly written screenplay and slack editing even this USP of the movie is quite frequently seen visiting the demesne of melodrama and shallow emotional expressiveness in some of the sequences.
Although the flow of the narration in both the halves of movie seems to be quite ill-paced, but with a frequent dose of action and roaring dialogues that too in Sunny's trademark style "Singh Saab The Great" somehow manages too keep viewers interest alive.
Decorated with music of Sonu Nigam and Anand Raj Anand dabbled in treacle of Ounjabi style, except a few, all the songs composed by Sameer and Kumaar are worth hearing, but certainly the title track "Singh Saab The Great" and "Heer" are the pick of the deck.
In performances arena, right from it's onset till its culmination "Singh Saab The Great" is entirely Sunny's show. Be it dialogue delivery of flexing those muscles, everything Sunny performs with utmost conviction. Although with some his somewhat suave avatar in the first half wouldn't have gone down well, but certainly his turbaned avatar surely would have brushed aside all the qualms of the fans.
As far as performance of Singh Sahab's lady love Minni ( Urvashi Rautela) is concerned then through the onscreen appearance Urvashi has looked confident and owns a total control over her performance. In his somewhat "zany baddie" avatar Prakash doesn't get much chance to do something different, but in-spite of that whatever part he plays he does it with utmost perfection. Amrita Rao is strictly OK.
Accompanied by Sanjay Mishra, after very long Johny Lever has looked at his hilarious best. As far as rest of the star-cast comprising Yashpal Sharma, Manoj Pahwa et al is concerned then within a very limited performance sphere they have been just fine.
Well, with nothing new or out the box in the offering, "Singh Saab The Great" has got a quite confined scope of making it big on the BO as far as that earning front is concerned. But the only game changer for the movie could be the die hard fan fraternity of Sunny, especially the one belonging to Northern India, who simply love to see this Macho-man of Indian cinema roar on the celluloid.
To sum up, "Singh Saab The Great", is a potpourri of some of the overused tangs which completely fails in evoking any kind of fascination or interest among the fans about the movie. But yeah the only unique selling proposition of "Singh Saab The Great" is Sunny and his trademark style of dialogue delivery and action. So prefer to have a rendezvous with "Singh Saab The Great" only if you don't want to miss the opportunity of seeing Sunny while exhibiting his trademark style of action and dialogue delivery.