Thakur Baldev Singh (Sanjeev Kumar), a former police inspector asks an old friend in the police force for help. He wants him to locate two crooks who always work together and are like brothers, Veeru (Dharmendra) and Jai (Amitabh Bachchan). He seems to need them for a dangerous mission. Asked why he wants some criminals for his job, the Thakur tells of his previous meeting with the two.
They were his prisoners then, bound to be taken on a freight train to the next city (and jail) by him and a few guards. Alas bandits attacked the train for its freight and slaughtered the Thakur's guards. He took his chances and trusted in Veeru's and Jai's promise of helping him and not trying to escape if he freed them. Together they eradicated the bandits in a very professional, if not neat manner. The Thakur was badly hurt in the fight, so Veeru and Jai had the choice of either getting him into a hospital or fleeing. They obviously chose to help him. So the Thakur knows the two are capable fighters who may do bad things, but aren't evil or inhuman. He doesn't even mind that they threw a coin to come to their decision.
Since we're spending the next forty minutes in the company of our really quite loveable rogues, we very soon catch on to the fact that Veeru and Jai tend to let this coin make many of their more difficult moral decisions for them, usually to the benefit of their better natures. After some (funny!) comedy, stints in and out of jail, song and dance with slight homosexual undertones (as it befits male bonding in movies), the Thakur's friend finally finds the two. Since the Thakur is willing to pay any price they ask for his job, they agree to follow him to his village. After he has paid them a nice advance and they have tossed their coin, of course.
On their way to the village they meet Veeru's future love interest, the cart driver Basanti (Hema Malini), who not only is a woman doing a typical men's job in rural India with absolute self-confidence, but also the first of a mutant species that can talk for hours without ever having to take a single breath. Dharmendra is charmed anyway (and who can blame him?).
When Jai and Veeru finally arrive at the Thakur's home, he is at last willing to explain what he wants them to do. They have to deliver the mad and sadistic bandit chief Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan), who is the kind of man local mothers use to frighten their children with, to the Thakur. Although the Thakur still does not want to explain to them why he wants the guy so badly (and alive), they agree.
Following this we will witness many amazing fights between Gabbar Singh and his men (who work more like the country version of a protection money racket or the bandits in The Magnificent Seven than like Dennis Moore) and our heroes, Jai's meeting with his own love interest, the widow Radha (Jaya Badhuri), torture, tragedy, moments of incredible coolness (in a Fuck Yeah! sense), the vilest bandit chief this way of Il Grande Silencio, and really anything anyone could ask for in this type of film. There may even be a death scene as heartbreaking as Chow Yun-Fat's death in A Better Tomorrow.
Sholay belongs to the sort of movie you don't do any favors with giving a detailed plot synopsis. Some of the later scenes will sound surprisingly silly if only written about and not experienced at the level of intensity ("Sholay" doesn't mean fire for nothing) the film achieves in its later stages. It actually reaches the point where the comedic subplots and the songs are needed breathers in all that is happening. It of course helps that the humor and the songs are perfectly intertwined with the dramatic parts, only the first act of the film plays them relatively loose.
I can not find a single bit I can criticize about the film, every aspect deserves a mention stuffed with superlatives, starting from the brilliant direction, to the incredible acting, the awesome script, the breathtaking action, the wonderful music, and so on and so on. It is probably for the best if you just keep Sholay in mind as an absolute masterpiece of cinema, the kind of film absolutely everyone should see at least once in their lives.
As the plot synopsis suggests, Sholay is heavily influenced by the Western genre, visually and in the nature of its heroes and villains more by the Spaghetti Western, morally more by the kind of American Western people like Bud Boetticher and John Sturges made. The obvious theme of the ability of people to change even when they never have been perfect and can't change their pasts would have resonated a lot with both Americans, I think.
I have learned from the blogs of people who know a lot more about Indian cinema than I do that Sholay actually is one of the defining texts of a Bollywood genre called the "Curry Western", whose films often tell of city people of dubious moral coming to the country, killing bad guys and getting cleansed by the country's purity, a sentiment very close to the (conservative) heart of the traditional Western. Sholay at least is a little more complex in this regard. The change for the better the country starts in its heroes is mirrored by changes for the better in the country itself.
Boy, I am glad I am not seeing perfect films every day, I really have trouble writing about them.