the roaring jeepbuster

Coming soon to theatres is Singham, the Bolly-remake of the Tamil blockbuster with Ajay Devgn (is this what they call dropped-A tuning?) stepping in for Suriya/Surya. The trailer featuring the title song has everything any lover of the opulent waste, the audacious stunts and fuming masculine grimaces of constipation that had been hallmarks of South Indian pulp cinema, usurped by Bollywood in a rage of remakes in the 80s and 90s and then left to thrive in the home base. taathaiyaa over to arrays of Dhols, colour-coordinated vigorous dancers, synchronised steps, a well-fed virile moustache (coconut oil, makkhan and lots of spirit gum). Watch kicked goons trip the loop fantastic as they defy the ordinary laws of Physics that work well in the IIT JEE, but not in the world of commercial cinema. Take a break to watch our hero fire a single shot at a jeep to send it flying (I kid you not!). The poster itself is quite cool, but I really like the teaser poster that was released some weeks before. That one just features a lion (Singham, duh!) with the letters of the title drawn out like a trim for its mane. The accompanying trailer offers more aerobics than the one with the title song. One only hopes that the obligatory romantic interludes are kept to a minimum, so that the lion's share of the film is devoted to conflict, confrontation and cracking jaws. It has just one curious oddity: it ends with the camera running in at a low angle to Devgn's face as he spits out his wheezy weak punchline: jis me.n hai dam to fakt baajiraao si.ngham. You see there's just a wee problem in how he pronounces fakt. फ़क्त is not how a Maharashtrian would pronounce it. There's no nuqtaa, which means it should be pha (try saying pa and ha at the same time and you'll get the idea) and not fa; and despite being written as फक्त, it's pronounced फक्तं (that's phakta for you). I wonder now if this was a weak attempt to toss a faux cuss word into the laps of the censor and then smile in all innocence.

By the way, does anyone know more about the name Shikre? I'm familiar with Shirke, but I don't think I've seen the name that Prakash Raj's character sports in the film. His name in the Tamil original referred to Murugan's vehicle of choice (the connection between that and a lion is left as an exercise to the reader).