Sholay (, ) is a 1975 Indian Hindi-language action-adventure film directed by Ramesh Sippy, produced by his father G. P. Sippy, and written by Salim–Javed. The film follows two criminals, Veeru (Dharmendra) and Jai (Amitabh Bachchan), who are hired by a retired police officer (Sanjeev Kumar) to capture the ruthless bandit Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan). Hema Malini and Jaya Bhaduri also star as Veeru and Jai's love interests, Basanti and Radha, respectively. The soundtrack was composed by R. D. Burman.
Filming took place in the rocky terrain of Ramanagara, in the southern state of Karnataka, over two and a half years, beginning in October 1973. After the Central Board of Film Certification mandated the removal of several violent scenes, Sholay was released theatrically as a 198-minute long film. The first version of the director's cut (running at 204 minutes) became available on home media in 1990. In 2025, the fully restored Director's Cut was released worldwide as Sholay: The Final Cut. Sholay is a Dacoit Western (sometimes called a "Curry Western"), combining the conventions of Indian dacoit films with those of Spaghetti Westerns along with elements of Samurai cinema.
Sholay was theatrically released on 15 August 1975. It received negative critical reviews and a tepid commercial response during its initial release. However, favourable word-of-mouth publicity helped it to become a box office success. It then went on to break records for continuous showings in many theatres across India, and ran for more than five years at Mumbai's Minerva theatre. The combined sales of the original soundtrack, scored by R. D. Burman, and the dialogues (released separately), set new records at the time. It was also an overseas success in the Soviet Union. Sholay was also at one point the highest-grossing Indian film ever at the time, and was the highest-grossing film in India up until Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (1994).
Sholay is often regarded as one of the greatest and most influential Indian films of all time. It was ranked first in the British Film Institute's 2002 poll of "Top 10 Indian Films" of all time. In 2005, the judges of the 50th Filmfare Awards named it the Best Film of 50 Years. Sholay was also a defining example of the masala film, which mixes several genres in one work. Scholars have noted several themes in the film, such as glorification of violence, conformation to Indian feudalism, debate between social order and mobilised usurpers, homosocial bonding, and the film's role as a national allegory. The film's dialogue contributed to numerous cultural memes and becoming part of India's daily vernacular partly due to the release of a Polydor Records dialogue-only LP.
Plot Theatrical release (1975) Best friends and small-time crooks Jai and Veeru escape from prison and are recruited by Thakur Baldev Singh, a former police inspector, to capture the notorious dacoit leader Gabbar Singh. Gabbar has been terrorising the rural village of Ramgarh and carries a ₹50,000 bounty. Thakur selects the duo because they had previously saved him from a train robbery, proving their valor and resourcefulness, however warns them that he wants Gabbar alive, not dead. Upon arriving in Ramgarh, Veeru falls for Basanti, a feisty, talkative horse-cart driver, while Jai develops develops feelings for Radha, Thakur's widowed, reclusive daughter-in-law.
The duo successfully thwarts Gabbar's henchmen when they arrive to extort supplies from the village. In a fit of rage over the failure, Gabbar executes the returning dacoits. During the festival of Holi, Gabbar's gang launches a massive ambush on the village. Though cornered, Jai and Veeru manage to repel the attackers. During the crossfire, a shotgun falls near Thakur's feet, but he does not pick it up or throw it to the duo despite it being within his reach. Frustrated by his apparent cowardice, Jai and Veeru threaten to abandon the assignment. Thakur then reveals his past: years prior, Gabbar slaughtered his entire family, and when Thakur went to Gabbar's hideout on his own to confront him, Gabbar caught him and severed both of his arms. He had hidden his dismemberment beneath a shawl constantly draped over his shoulders, leaving him physically incapable of firing a weapon.
Moved by Thakur's tragedy, Jai and Veeru vow to capture Gabbar alive without taking any payment. Seeking to break the villagers' resolve, Gabbar murders Ahmed, the son of the local Imam, Rahim Chacha. Instead of surrendering the mercenary duo, the grieving community encourages them to retaliate. Gabbar's men later ambush and capture Veeru and Basanti, forcing Basanti to dance on broken glass under threat of Veeru's execution. Jai infiltrates the hideout, rescues them, and the trio retreats to a rocky ridge under heavy gunfire. As their ammunition runs low, a wounded Jai deceives Veeru into taking Basanti to safety while he holds the perimeter. Jai sacrifices his life by using his final bullet to detonate a cache of dynamite, collapsing a bridge and killing the remaining dacoits.
Veeru returns to find Jai, but the severely wounded Jai dies in his arms, leaving both him and Radha devastated. Consumed by grief, an enraged Veeru decimates Gabbar's camp and corners the dacoit leader, nearly beating him to death. Thakur intervenes, reminding Veeru of his and Jai's promise to deliver Gabbar alive. Veeru, although fueled by rage and grief agrees to hand him over solely to fulfill Jai's share of the promise. Wearing specialised spike-soled shoes, Thakur uses his feet to brutally pin and crush Gabbar's arms, in stark reflection to how Thakur himself had lost his arms. Just as Thakur prepares to deliver a fatal blow, a police contingent arrives, and the senior officer convinces Thakur to let the law handle the criminal. Following Jai's funeral and having completed his assignment, a somber Veeru boards a train to leave Ramgarh, only to find Basanti waiting on board to join him.
Director's cut The original director's cut features a darker, alternative resolution to the conflict. In this version, the police do not arrive to intercept the final confrontation. Instead, Thakur relentlessly beats Gabbar with his spiked boots, ultimately kicking him against the sharp, rusted iron nails of the very wooden pillars where Thakur had been chained and dismembered years earlier. The impact impales and kills Gabbar instantly.
This version also restores several sequences originally excised by the Indian Censor Board due to concerns regarding graphic violence and vigilante justice. These include detailed scenes of Thakur lacing his shoe soles with metallic spikes, extended camaraderie between Jai and Veeru during the train ambush, and the explicit on-screen murder of the Imam's son.
Cast
Production Development The screenwriter pair Salim–Javed, consisting of Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar, began narrating the idea for Sholay as a four-line snippet to filmmakers in 1973. The idea was rejected by two producer/director teams, including directors Manmohan Desai and Prakash Mehra. About six months after the release of Zanjeer (1973), Salim-Javed contacted G. P. Sippy and his son Ramesh Sippy, and narrated the four-line snippet to them. Ramesh Sippy liked the concept of Sholay and hired them to develop it. The original idea of the film involved an army officer who decided to hire two ex-soldiers to avenge the murder of his family. The army officer was later changed to a policeman because Sippy felt that it would be difficult to get permission to shoot scenes depicting army activities. Salim-Javed completed the script in one month, incorporating names and personality traits of their friends and acquaintances. The film's script and dialogues are in Hindustani; Salim-Javed wrote the dialogues in Urdu script, which was then transcribed by an assistant into Devanagari script so that Hindi readers could read the Urdu dialogues.
The film's plot was loosely styled after Akira Kurosawa's 1954 samurai cinema film, Seven Samurai. Sholay is a defining example of the Dacoit Western film, combining the conventions of Indian dacoit films, especially Mehboob Khan's Mother India (1957) and the Dilip Kumar and Nitin Bose film Gunga Jumna (1961), with that of Westerns, especially Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns such as Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) as well as The Magnificent Seven (1960). It also has some plot elements borrowed from the Indian films Mera Gaon Mera Desh (1971) and Khote Sikkay (1974). A scene depicting an attempted train robbery was inspired by a similar scene in Gunga Jumna, and has also been compared to a similar scene in North West Frontier (1959). A scene showing the massacre of Thakur's family has been compared with the massacre of the McBain family in Once Upon a Time in the West. Sholay may have also been influenced by Sam Peckinpah's Westerns, such as The Wild Bunch (1969) and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), and George Roy Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).
The character Gabbar Singh was modelled on a real-life dacoit Gabbar Singh Gujjar who had menaced the villages around Gwalior in the 1950s. Any policeman captured by Gujjar had his ears and nose cut off, and was released as a warning to other policemen. The fictional Gabbar was also influenced by larger-than-life characters in Pakistani author Ibn-e-Safi's Urdu novels, Dilip Kumar's dacoit character Gunga from the film Gunga Jumna who speaks with a similar mixed Khariboli and Awadhi dialect, and villains from Sergio Leone's films. Sippy wanted to do away with the clichéd idea of a man becoming a dacoit due to societal issues, as was the case in other films, and focused on Gabbar being an emblem of pure evil. To emphasise the point of Gabbar being a new type of villain, Sippy avoided the typical tropes of dacoits wearing dhotis and pagris and sporting a tika and worshipping "Ma Bhavani"; Gabbar would be wearing army fatigues. The look of the character of the jailer, played by Asrani was influenced by Adolf Hitler. Javed Akhtar brought a book on World War II which had several pictures of Hitler posing to set the typical posture of the character in the film. Asrani spiced up his character with some ideas about Hitler's speech delivery he had heard from a teacher in FTII. The trademark 'Ha Ha' at the end of his monologues was inspired by a similar performance by Jack Lemmon in The Great Race. Soorma Bhopali, a minor comic relief character, was based on an acquaintance of actor Jagdeep, a forest officer from Bhopal named Soorma. The real-life Soorma eventually threatened to press charges when people who had viewed the film began referring to him as a woodcutter. The main characters' names, Jai and Veeru, mean "victory" and "heroism" in Hindi.
Casting The producers considered Danny Denzongpa for the role of Gabbar Singh, but he could not accept it as he was committed to act in Feroz Khan's Dharmatma (1975), under production at the same time. Amjad Khan, who was the second choice, prepared himself for the part by reading the book Abhishapta Chambal, which told of the exploits of Chambal dacoits. The book was written by Taroon Kumar Bhaduri, the father of fellow cast member Jaya Bhaduri. Sanjeev Kumar also wanted to play the role of Gabbar Singh, but Salim-Javed "felt he had the audience's sympathy through roles he'd done before; Gabbar had to be completely hateful."