This is the fifth in my 2022 monthly series introducing myself to Bollywood movies. I mentioned a few months back that I became aware of my March movie, Dhoom, by seeing a large billboard for its sequel hanging in downtown Melbourne. This city is very hospitable to Indian cinema in a way I can't imagine most major American cities being, or not very prominently anyway -- maybe only in heavily Indian areas. (Do any American cities have the Indian equivalent of a Chinatown? An Indiatown, maybe? Little Delhi?)
I tell you this because May seemed like a perfect time to catch a current release -- in the cinema.
The idea might not have occurred to me on my own, but it occurred to my wife. I had showed her a great dance number from Bajirao Mastani, my April film, and that was the occasion for her to show me a trailer for a new movie she had seen advertised called RRR, which she was dying to see.
I can see why. It's a historical epic with great visual effects and action scenes, and an insane sensibility that I would later compare to the films of Timur Bekmambetov. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
We talked about making this happen, actually going to a Melbourne Hoyts (that's where Bollywood films mostly seem to play locally) to see RRR. But my wife and I might see one movie a year in the theater together, and I don't think we've seen any together since before the pandemic -- not just the two of us. (She's been along to movies like Spider-Man: No Way Home and Ghostbusters: Afterlife.) The 185-minute running time, had we been aware of it, likely would have further put the kibosh on the idea.
But I left it really late to watch my Audient Bollywood movie for May, and then a few days ago, I happened to see RRR -- on Netflix. It may be that's always where it was supposed to debut for us here in Australia, or it may be that with the Netflix debut pending, its local theatrical window was very short. In any case, a three-hour running time is far more digestible of an idea when you can watch it at home and spread it over two nights.
Which is exactly what we did on Saturday and Sunday.
And this movie is entertaining as fuck. Excuse my language. But it is.
The two guys you see in the poster -- well, before I tell you who they are, let me explain to you what's going on in that scene, to give you some idea about the tone of this movie. The guy on the bottom has just broken the guy on the top out of prison, where he was scheduled to be hanged, and because the guy on top had his legs broken, he can't walk on his own. So instead of the bottom guy just cradling him or slinging him over one shoulder, they come up with this daunting blend, where the guy on the bottom can be the guy on the top's legs, while the guy on the top fires rifles and punches people out from a height of about ten feet in the air. And you can just imagine the stunts they do jointly, flipping gymnastically around various structures while knocking out various combatants, all the while never becoming disentangled.
The top guy, Rama Raju (Ram Charan), is the guy we meet first. He's a policeman serving his British rulers, and he's a badass. Not only does he believe absolutely in his duty and in fulfilling his role to the best of his abilities, but the best of his abilities involves insane, suicidal acts of bravery. The way we meet him is a perfect illustration of this. During a crowd scene where protestors are trying to knock over a fence as they protest the British ruling regime, a man in the crowd hurtles something over the fence and injures an important person. Determined to arrest this man, Raju runs at full sprint, up an incline, and into a teeming mass of people, all of whom want to do him harm. He literally fights hundreds of people who are closing in on him and crushing him, repeatedly emerging from impossible circumstances to continue pushing this crowd aside as he proves his quarry. And you better bet he gets it, bloodied and bashed though he may be at the end.
The bottom guy, Bheem (N.T. Rama Rao Jr.), is one of the people on the other side of the fence. Not literally, but he's part of a native group in opposition to the ruling class, who casually tread on the value of Indian life, and steal a young girl from his community because they like the way she sings -- and brutally kill her mother on the way out of the village. He's a protector of the village and vows to get this girl back -- who is either literally or figuratively his sister, I couldn't quite be sure. He's a badass too, again as exemplified in the scene where we first meet him. As part of a plan that we don't see materialize until later in the movie, he uses himself as human bait to try to catch vicious predator -- at first they think it's going to be a wolf, but the plans change and it's a tiger instead. (I won't spoil how they use the tiger in case you are inspired to go check out RRR on Netflix yourself.) His scene first escaping, then snaring in a trap that keeps on failing in unexpected ways, then finally subduing the tiger is one for the ages.
It's clear that director S.S. Rajamouli knows what the hell he's doing when it comes to grand set pieces. He's directed 11 other features, though without looking into it more than I care to do right now, I have no idea if any of them are in this same vein. But let's just say that the more I see of especially recent Bollywood -- you may remember that Bajirao Mastani was from 2015 -- the more convinced I am that the scope, the scale and the visual effects are only a slight step down from the best of what Hollywood is capable, if they are a step down at all. I know that tiger was digital, just as I know that some of the humans themselves had to have digital enhancements to pull of these sorts of stunts. And there are a few times when, for example, a person being blown off their feet by an explosion, or an animal tumbling head over foot, maybe did not tumble or fall in the way that gravity would truly dictate. But it's crazy fun and entertaining, and both my wife and I let out whoops of surprise and joy on regular occasions.
Plot? I can't tell you how closely this sticks to any of the real events in India of the 1920s -- that's when this occurs, if I didn't mention it -- and there's a disclaimer about historical accuracy, or lack thereof, at the beginning of the movie. (Bajirao Mastani had this too.) But the two main characters were real people, famed Indian revolutionaries. All you really need to know is that the British characters are all awful fascists and major assholes (with the one exception of Bheem's British love interest), and that although Raju is initially on their side, it won't/can't last. A revolution is coming to India, and these guys are going to lead it, in spite of dozens of twists and turns and absurd set pieces along the way.
I'm dying to tell you what they do with the tiger(s). But I won't.
However I do want to communicate to you just how gloriously over-the-top this all is. There's an amazing sequence where the pair -- who are working together while the policeman is undercover -- save a child from burning oil slick in the water. It involves riding a horse and a motorcycle over alternate sides of a bridge, each holding a rope as they swing down to grasp the child while also swinging past each other and exchanging a flag, which the second guy will use to protect himself from the flames as he swings back through them. As with many of the set pieces in this movie, a description in words cannot do it justice. You just have to watch it.
And I think, I am concluding right now as I write this sentence, that I may actually watch this movie again. All three hours and five minutes of it. I know there are wonderfully brazen, totally outrageous scenes that I'm forgetting that I would love to watch again. There are parts involving a flaming motorcycle and a bunch of TNT that would be well worth the second watch.
The one thing RRR doesn't have a lot of? Bollywood dancing. There are about two numbers, and then a number that plays over the closing credits as well -- far shy of the ten to 12 numbers in the films I'd watched previously. The one I remember best, though, is the two leads involved in a dance with insanely hard moves. They cheated a little bit by speeding up the film, but I don't care -- the end result is what matters, and the end result of all of RRR is glorious.
One last thing: RRR stands for Rise Roar Revolt.
Okay, each of my last three movies in this series have been from the 21st century, so it's time to delve back into the past again a bit. In June I am likely to watch Anand, a 1971 film with the merciful running time of only two hours and two minutes.
