RRR

kamaravichow 9/3/2022 3:40:08 PM 8.4

The Cinemark near me has started to show Indian movies. Not feeling like sitting home tonight, I decided to catch this one, and luck was with me. My image of Indian movies, I confess, was that they were mostly musicals centering around a love story involving a very beautiful young woman and a very handsome young man, with lots of elaborate, high-energy dance numbers to keep things going. There is a love story here, but it's not the focus of the film. There are also a few large and very impressive dance numbers, but only a few. (The men's dancing, extremely athletic, astounded me.) Rather, this movie focuses on the story of two young men in 1920s India who, each in his own way, are fighting against the English occupiers. The English are portrayed as inhuman monsters. Very often, they made me think of the worst atrocities committed by the Germans in France during World War II, or the most rabid racists in the American South. The first time we see the two male leads dancing, a link is indeed made between the Indians and what appear to be Black American musicians. Every time the Indians manage to take revenge on the English for their inhuman abuse of the Indians, you cheer - but at times I wondered if I would have cheered watching a parallel movie about Blacks taking revenge on white racists who had mistreated them in the American South, especially if I had been in a movie theater where, like tonight, I was the only audience member who did not belong to the oppressed population. Imagine Spike Lee, for example, able to make a movie in which he did not have to worry about selling tickets to whites as well as Blacks, and you have some idea of how anti-British colonials this movie is. It is the difference between a society in which the oppressor was a small minority of the population vs. Here, where Blacks are a minority of the American population. I don't want to push this comparison too far. The movie only makes the connection in one scene. But this is very definitely a movie that focuses on the story of a brutally oppressed people seeking freedom from an inhuman oppressor, rather than just a series of dance numbers. I don't speak any of the Indian languages used in the movie, but I had no problem following what was going on with the subtitles, which were almost always easy to read. I'm sure there were cultural references I didn't catch, however, especially at the end in the final big dance number, which seemed to be presenting India as a nation of different regions and cultures all united in one. The director and cinematographer definitely deserve praise. There was one very striking visual image after the next, especially during the battle scenes. Ram Charan, dressed as a "native warrior"-if that term means anything anymore-flying through flames was breathtaking. So, if you've even been curious about Indian movies, give this one a try. Yes, it's three hours long, but trust me, the time goes flying by. This is truly an action movie, a mixture of visual fantasy and often very graphic realism that held my interest to the end.

badelf 7/6/2023 10:49:01 PM 8.4

This movie is one, really fun, action-packed, superhero watch. The CGI, of course, is fantastic. What I love about this movie, though, is that it's not just an empty, trivial story as an excuse for CGI. Quite the contrary. The story itself is a fictionalized version of a very real, revolutionary period just before Gandhi's non-violence movement took the lead. If anyone could make any complaint at all, it would be that the British roles are caricatures. Honestly though, what do we white Americans know of how Imperial Britain treated its "non-white subjects"? We DO know that, in 1919, British troops fired on a crowd of unarmed protesters killing hundreds of men, women and children. So the film is steeped in real history. Perhaps, the caricatures were Rajamouli's way of side-stepping the issue by allowing the viewer to accept them at the same level of unreality as the two super heroes of the film. The film itself is over the top, fun and action-packed. It even has the requisite Bollywood dance scenes! I loved the way Ram became Rama, the mythological Hindu archer, an avatar of Vishnu. I probably missed other cultural references, but I suspect that when the two superheroes cooperate, they have 4 arms - that is Shiva, the destroyer with a bow and arrow in two of the arms. The story and production design are gripping. S.S. Rajamouli does such an amazing job with the pacing that three hours seems to fly by before you can even say popcorn.

griggs79 10/1/2024 1:22:26 PM 8.4

This has been on my watchlist for far too long, and I only wish I had watched it sooner. The film is a visual masterpiece, its beauty serving as a captivating contrast to the intense and brutal violence it depicts. For a fictionalised history, the story is remarkably deep, with characters that are not just well-developed, but also deeply engaging, with clear and believable motivations that draw you into their world. The only downside? The British actors. They're as stiff as cardboard, and not one fiddles with their moustache like a proper Edwardian villain. What's the point of being dastardly if you're not moustache-twirling?