All pundits had dismissed Sholay as too gory, some have said the same about Dhurandhar. But these days, film reviewers’ politics often determine the review. Viewers, then as now, don’t care
Few films have enjoyed an afterlife like Sholay. Director Ramesh Sippy’s multi-starrer, now 50 years old, was restored and re-released this year to eagerness and acclaim. It wasn’t always like this. When first released in the middle of the Emergency in 1975, the film was panned by most critics as too violent, too long and too derivative. One of the reviews described it as “a shaggy dog western…monstrously violent and sprawled in loose limbed abandon.” Also, most reviews did not devote a single word to Amjad Khan’s portrayal of Gabbar.