Singhamis a 2011 Indian Hindi-language action film directed by Rohit Shetty and produced by Reliance Entertainment, based on a script by writers Yunus Sajawal and Farhad-Sajid. It serves as first installment of Shetty's Cop Universe. A remake of the 2010 Tamil Suriya film of the same title by Hari, the film stars Ajay Devgn in the lead role as a police officer named Bajirao Singham alongside Kajal Aggarwal and Prakash Raj who reprises his role as in the original.
Inspector Rakesh Kadam (Sudhanshu Pandey) is an honest police officer who ends up committing suicide due to the false accusations of corruption levelled against him by Jaikant Shikre (Prakash Raj), a crime boss, businessman and politician in Goa running various rackets like kidnapping, extortion and smuggling. Kadam's wife Megha (Sonali Kulkarni) vows revenge against Jaikant in front of him, exclaiming that God will dispense justice to him for this act.
The story moves to Shivgad, a small village near the Goa-Maharashtra border. Bajirao Singham (Ajay Devgn), an honest police officer like Kadam, is in charge of the Shivgad police station. A station house officer in charge of his town, he resolves most of the problems in his town informally and without filing charge sheets, thereby gaining much reputation and love from the villagers. Gautam "Gotya" Bhosle (Sachin Khedekar) is an industrialist and Bajirao's father Manikrao "Manya" Singham's (Govind Namdev) childhood friend. He comes to Shivgad with his wife and daughters Kavya (Kajal Aggarwal) and Anjali (Sana Amin Sheikh). Eventually, Singham and Kavya fall in love with each other. Their courtship takes place through a series of comic events where she initially hates him after he slaps her tight when she is caught frightening villagers disguised as a ghost, but then has a change of heart when she sees his honest and simple nature and finds that he wants to apologize for his behaviour.
Everything seems to run smoothly until Jaikant, who is given conditional bail for a murder he had committed, is required to travel to Shivgad to sign the bail through a fortnight. Acting on the recommendation of his top lieutenant Shiva Naik (Ashok Samarth), he instead sends one of his allies, Vitthal Dalvi, and his men, to do the formalities, much to the fury of Singham who demands Jaikant sign the bail-in person within the next four hours. An enraged Jaikant reaches Shivgad to confront Singham, but the villagers, upon hearing of his comments against Singham, threaten to finish him off, damaging his convoy's vehicles in a dramatic show of public power. Singham asks his assistant, Ramesh Kelkar, to bring the register containing Jaikant's record, forces a thumb impression of Jaikant's left hand onto the register, and warns him to continue signing the bail for the remaining 14 days, as a humiliated Jaikant looks on terrified by Singham's courage and leaves the village on foot as a sign of protest, refusing to travel by wheels. On the highway, as he stops at a point, he recalls his humiliation, learns of Singham's background from Shiva through a source, and using his political contacts, gets Singham transferred to Goa to seek revenge.
Singham, unaware of Jaikant's hand behind his transfer, joins the Colva police station in Goa as the in-charge, when on the very first day, he is confronted by Jaikant, who shows Singham his true colours and tries to intimidate him by mentioning how the officer preceding him ended up committing suicide, warning Singham that he is out to trouble him to no end. Eventually, in a discussion with his co-workers and juniors, Sub-Inspector Dev Phadnis (Vineet Sharma), Sub-Inspector Abbas Malik (Ankur Nayyar), and Head Constable Prabhu Sawalkar (Ashok Saraf), he learns how much the three officers hate Jaikant for his crimes but are unable to take any action because of Jaikant's political powers. DSP Satyam Patkar (Murali Sharma), Singham's senior, is on Jaikant's payroll and takes care of concealing and eliminating the evidence of Jaikant's crime from the eyes of the law. Singham, upon learning of Kadam's tragedy from the colleagues and Megha, and taking cues from what he has already seen, tries to take this to the notice of DGP Vikram Pawar (Pradeep Velankar) but it turns out to be of no use as there is no evidence against Jaikant and Patkar. Local minister Anant Narvekar (Anant Jog) soon adds to Singham's troubles when he refuses to support him against Jaikant, later launching the latter as a candidate from his local political party. Feeling defeated and mentally tortured by Jaikant to no limits, a worried Singham first contemplates returning home but is stopped by Kavya, who encourages him to fight against the evil and not run away like a coward. At that point, some of Jaikant's henchmen attack him, and he, realizing the futility of returning to Shivgad, brutally beats the goons black and blue, locking them up.
Singham then arrests Shiva in a fake case of illegally smuggling alcohol after setting him up to tear the FIR against the goons, who he had come to free, and recalling to the officers that Shiva, under Jaikant's orders, had planted bundles of cash in Kadam's jeep. Later, he thwarts off Patkar in full view of the public when Patkar, bounded by his duties to Jaikant, tries to bail Shiva out. Jaikant kidnaps Kavya's younger sister Anjali for ransom on Kavya's birthday. Rescuing her, Singham successfully traces the origins of the kidnapping racket to Jaikant, confronting Narvekar with his team in anger, but is unable to arrest him as he wins the election and is set to become a minister of the Goa Government.
Jaikant's party wins the elections, he hands over transfer orders to Singham to go back to Shivgad within 24 hours. That night, at a police function organized for the officers with their families, Singham confronts the officers, particularly Pawar and Patkar, for not abiding by their duties and being dishonest and unfaithful to their profession by protecting Jaikant. At first, Patkar berates Singham, but filled with guilt, Phadnis, Abbas and Sawalkar decide to help Singham fight Jaikant. Soon, he is joined by the entire Goa Police Force, with Pawar also extending support, and all of them invade Jaikant's home to kill him, with Patkar revealing himself to be in support of Singham in a twist. Jaikant eventually escapes but after running through the city, he is arrested by the police the next morning. They bring him to the police station and shoot him dead on Kadam's chair, threatening Shiva moments after the showdown to change his statement. At a media conference, while proving Jaikant and Narvekar guilty, Pawar and Singham clear the late Kadam of all corruption charges.
After the success of the Tamil film Singam, directed by Hari in 2010, the film's remake rights were sold by the producers for Hindi and Kannada versions. The co-producers of the Tamil version, Reliance Big Pictures purchased the Hindi remake rights and announced in November 2010 that the version would feature Rohit Shetty as director and Ajay Devgn in the lead role.[5]
The film's DVD was released on 23 August 2011. The Delhi High Court, upon Reliance Entertainment's request, issued an order to all Indian ISPs to block file sharing sites to prevent unauthorized sharing of Singham.[14]
Sukanya Venkatraghavan from Filmfare gave two stars out of five and said "Singham is a film that will invoke wolf whistles and applause from its audience. It is gloriously massy. The movie knows its job and does it well. It does nothing out of the box to grab your attention and yet it does. Pretty easily. Watch it for its robust potboiler personality. With extra masala as garnish. Ajay Devgan pulls out all stops for this one. He is fierce and impactful. This is his show all the way. His quirky forte for comedy too comes forth in the ubiquitous ha ha sequences with leading lady Kajal Aggarwal who looks pretty and has done what she has been told to, but probably deserved a meatier debut."[22] Kaveree Bamzai from India Today gave three out of five stars and deemed that "Mr Devgn tries hard, growling like a Singham, and acting like a superman, but I was more interested in Prakash Raj's two tone Al Capone shoes."[23] Raja Sen from Rediff gave one and a half stars out of five and said "All I can personally say about this trend of remaking one-note Southern hits as a viewer is that it's an exhausting one. It is in the tiny victories that we must seek refuge after a film like this: I'm just glad the hero, so eager to peel off his uniform, left his pants on."[24] Sudhish Kamath from The Hindu said "The original wasn't the best film around but it had a few smarts, pace and fury, and worked despite its cheesy visual effects purely because of Suriya who made the corniest lines sound good. Devgn does exactly the opposite. He takes some half-decent lines (by Farhad and Sajid) and makes them sound cheesy."[25] Rajeev Masand of CNN-IBN gave 2 stars out of 5, commenting "Remake of the 2010 Tamil blockbuster of the same name, 'Singham' has occasional bursts of comedy (both puerile and genuinely funny), but it's never quite as entertaining as the similarly intentioned 'Dabangg'."[26]
Shubha Shetty Saha from MiD DAY gave the film a score of two stars and deemed that "Nothing turns director Rohit Shetty on more than cars meeting mid air. We all know that by now. And this film has some breath taking action sequences, too. That's about it is."[27] Meenakshi Rao from The Pioneer describes the film as "the David Dhawan of action, or for that matter the Golmaal of fights. To keep the audience engaged all through such unending babble needs some kind of acumen which normal people do not always have and through which people like Rohit Shetty get to make a whole lot of money, if not sense." giving it seven out of ten stars.[28] Kunal Guha from Yahoo! Movies gave two stars and says that "The film's assumption that mispronunciation is funny makes us endure words like honest (with a loud 'h'), clean cheet (clean chit), noun-saans (nonsense) and sooocide (suicide). The dialogues are spouted with immense enthusiasm but the words defuse the intensity and make them seem trivial. Devgn does a fair job and conveys sufficient conviction and humility through his character. Kajal Aggarwal makes an unobjectionable debut and her eyes would surely inspire a few compliments."[29]
3a8082e126