Film review: RRR (2022)

This film is EXHAUSTING.  Yes, it's over three hours long (so we had to watch it in two halves), but it's also just one action scene after another (with a few epic song-and-dance numbers thrown into the mix). For most filmmakers, this would be all of their filmography put into a blender, with all of the slow bits taken out.  Apparently it's the most expensive Indian film ever made, at about $72M, and I'm only surprised that it isn't much more than that, because every dollar is up there on the screen.  Not just in the effects (which are, let's be honest, a bit cartoonish, with rather ropey CGI), but in the casts of thousands getting thrown every which way, and the giant sets, many of which get blown into bits.

Technically, I suppose, it is loosely based in reality, but rather in the way a WWII film like The Dirty Dozen or Inglorious Basterds (or however it's spelled) is, with the British (played by a motley crew of, while they are indeed actual British actors, one of whom I realize I've heard of before, but they honestly could be a lot better at being evil - where's Alan Rickman when you need him) playing the role of the Nazis, which, of course, they pretty much did.  Essentially the film is an epic bromance between the hairier very country-hick Bheem, and the also-country-but-a-lot-more-hardened Ram.  

Just like in The Departed, however, Ram is actually a British cop who's been charged with catching Bheem, but when they meet cute while rescuing a boy (who is in a boat, threatened by a train that's fallen off a bridge - it's even more ridiculous than it sounds, especially in the way they end up rescuing him) neither realizes that the other is his foe.  Bheem's mission is actually to rescue a little girl who was taken from his village when a horrible English Lady liked the henna art she drew on her hand and wanted to keep her, little realizing that that particular tribe had an ethos of all-for-one, so that they will never allow a lamb to stray from the flock.  We first meet Bheem capturing wolves and a tiger 

for purposes that only become clear halfway through the film in perhaps the absolute acme of the stupidly amazing action sequences.  I have to say that a lot of people die just to recapture one, let's be honest, rather whiny little girl, and one wonders if it ends up being worth it.  Meanwhile [spoiler] it is revealed about 2 hours in that Ram is not really the super-keen British cop he has been pretending to be, but has a tragic past where he had to blow up his father (who'd already had a finger shot off - long story) to take out some dastardly British, and his promise to his pre-exploded father (who had just witnessed Ram's brother and mother die) was to get a gun for every member of his village, to fight the British.  So his many exploits of beating up fellow Indians as a supercop for the British are just a ruse, to gain their confidence enough to be put in charge of a lorry load of guns, which he will then steal.  But (many dance numbers later) his plans are derailed because he has to rescue Bheem, after having caught him in the first place.

Would I recommend it?  Well, I think everyone should see it.  And the non-stop action and dancing and singing is never less than amazing and entertaining.  But it's an odd melange.  You'd think it would be ideal for kids, except there's quite a lot of genuinely upsetting (for kids) violence - fingers shot off, people shot dead, necks snapped, that sort of thing.  And, as I also found with the works of John "Hard Boiled" Woo, the apparently quite sincere but ridiculously over-the-top saccharine sentimentality is almost impossible for this cynical Westerner to take.  But our heroes are very appealing (and Ram, in particular, is impossibly gorgeous, first with a luscious mustache, and then, after apparently being in prison for a couple of weeks, long rock-star locks and a full beard) 

and the dance numbers are like nothing I, a non Bollywood-aficionado have ever seen.  I can't imagine what the director will do for an encore, though.  Here's hoping he tries his hand at science fiction!