Rohit Shetty, as we all know, likes Ajay Devgn, silly comedies and tossing cars in the air. He also likes tattoos, sequels, long-waisted girls and gangsters who talk gibberish. Shetty has tried action before, but they have spurned him. Not this time. Singham, a primitive, archetypal genre piece, is a hit. Which is not to say that I approve. I don’t.

Let’s go into flashback: Rohit Shetty, having established his credentials as a filmmaker who makes people laugh and part with their money, wanted to test if he could make people angry and still take their money. So he scouted around for a script. The alert people at a production house heard and immediately sent him the DVD of their recent Tamil hit. Shetty watched Singam and saw lots of opportunities to toss cars. But there was other not-so-exciting stuff: The heroine got shot, the hero’s best-friend got killed by the villain who ran a lucrative kidnapping business, and the hero spent a lot of time investigating stuff and clutching his head. There was also a good politician.

Hmmm, thought Shetty. Ajay can do all the bone-crunching action and rousing-dissing talk; I can arrange to have cars tossed in the air. But this killing-probing has to go.

It’ll be one good cop against all bad guys. And since the country is not in the mood for a good politician, we’ll pay homage to the men of the soil, the hazaar Anna Hazares of our hinterlands, by making the village good and the city bad. But, thought Shetty, what will we call it? Singam? Lingam? Flingam? Oh-ho, we’ll just add an “H” and call it Singham. And since it is Singham, reflected Shetty, let’s also put a smile on the Thackerays’ faces. Saffron clothes alone won’t do. We’ll need a lion roaring continually in the background; we’ll have Shivaji smiling beatifically on our honourable hero whose name will be Bajirao Singham and who will shout out threats only in Marathi.

Rohit Shetty should have called it Jingom.
Anyway. The film begins with an honest cop, Inspector Kadam, of Colva thana, Goa. A powerful local goonda, Jaykant Shikre (Prakash Raj), has framed and defamed him, and pushed him to suicide. Kadam’s colleagues, however, are not unduly perturbed — either they are small fry and scared, or they are big fry and sold. But Kadam’s wife, Megha (Sonali Kulkarni), seeks justice. With her little baffled boy, she goes from office to office, to pinch dead consciences to life. None respond. So she confronts Jaykant and tells him that insaaf will be done. Who will do it? She points heavenwards.

Cut to a holy pond in a temple complex. It is twilight, diyas are burning, the water is shimmering. One taut body rises from the ripples. Wet, bronzy, brawny, beautiful. It’s a body Lord Shiva would be happy to have; It’s a body Ganesha would look at and grab a ladoo. It’s the body we see in dreams. Muscles defined, waist carved, nipples erect.

Hands clasped in obeisance, the body walks out, into the dancing villagers of Shivgad. He, Bajirao Singham (Ajay Devgn), is the inspector in-charge of the local thana. He is benevolent with the good’n’meek but severe with the loud’n’bad. Villages love Singham, and his father, who has a fruit-vegetable business, is proud of him. All is well with Ralegan Siddhi, I mean, Shivgad.

Into this bliss drives an old buddy of Singham’s dad — he is loco, but his daughter Kavya (Kajal Aggarwal) is cute and of marriageable age. So she first gets slapped by Singham and then has her honour restored. Goondas tease her and Singham treats them to his favourite punitive action — coconut-phodoing stunt is followed by hurling them around and, once they all land, it’s public lashing time with his sarkari belt.

All this macho business makes Kavya very happy and she skips about telling everyone that she is in love.

Meanwhile, in Goa, Jaykant’s kidnapping and extortion business is flourishing. But, since he is to be made dead by Singham, a court case comes up and it so transpires that Jaykant has to mark his attendance at the Shivgad thana.

Jaykant arrives in a long convoy. This agitates the villagers — they don’t like big speeding cars carrying loud louts, so they trash them. And then, Singham calls Jaykant a “mamuli goonda”.

You see, Jaykant has been repeatedly saying, “Kuch bhi karna, mera ego hurt nahin karna.” But Singham has done just that. Jaykant leaves huffing and puffing, promising to do “post ka port-mortem”. He gets Singham transferred to Goa, to Kadam’s thana. This is Jaykant’s illaka and now it’s his turn to humiliate Singham.

Singham learns about Kadam, meets corrupt cops, wizened cops and slimy politicians. He tries to arrest Jaykant and his men, but... Frustrated, he has a momentary power-failure and wants to go back home. But, there’s insaaf to be done, Kavya to be won and cops to be woken up, via a stirring speech about Ashoka’s lions sitting on their topis.

Singham, which has a distinct southern tang and kick, is a call to action, a political call to arms, against all ye corrupt people. But it carefully, deliberately, chooses who will do the killing and who will do the clapping. It also pisses and marks the boundary of the area it wants cleansed: Maharashtra.

Singham invokes other vigilante cops — Vijay and Chulbul — but unlike them this cop is not secular. He is of his village and only for his people.

The film’s politics put me off. As did the spastic treatment to the script and characters. The dialogue, by Farhad and Sajid, are funny and the villain, Prakash Raj, sufficiently amusing. They together hold us back from dissolving in the saffron goo. Action is slick and fast.

Rohit Shetty taps into the sentiment of the moment — emasculation, frustration — and gratifies it, but why pick a cop? Endowing a cop with nobility doesn’t ring true, especially not when he is neither Chulbul-charming nor when the target of his anger and lashing is generic sleaze. Here the villain doesn’t do any bodily harm to Singham. Sure, Jaykant insults Singham, chucks some stones in his direction, kidnaps his saali-to-be, but he returns her in one piece. So what is it? It is ego. It is the bloated ego of the do-gooder. Singham is vigilante cop let loose on all things foul. I felt fluctuating connect with Singham, but mostly he made me queasy.