06-08-2022, 09:22 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-08-2022, 09:57 PM by Drunk Monk.)
It's been a while since I've indulged in any Bollywood, and man, I missed it.
But to be specific, RRR is Tollywood - it's a Telugu film, not Bombay (or Mumbai as it's really called), not Hindi. But y'all don't care about that. You want to know if you should check out the biggest budget Indian film made to date. It's also the 3rd highest Indian grosser domestically and the 2nd globally.
Let's cut to the chase - I totally D00M recommend this even though it is a whopping 3+ hours long and has lots of cultural baggage you won't understand. It's got some eye-popping stuff in it - panoramic crowd sequences, ridiculously absurd action, delicious dance numbers, sappy nationalism, and the sort of karmic plot twists so prevalent in Indian cinema that it's well worth the watch. It's deep Tollywood but a good taste of how this genre works.
But let me let you in on a little secret. I've often said that if you set the gratuitous slo-mo so pervasive in Indian cinema to a normal speed, they wouldn't be so freaking long. Netflix lets you do this. There's a function that lets you increase your play speed to 1.5 or 2 (you can also slow it down if your watching it on percoset or something). I bumped it up and hardly noticed, except for a frantic dance number that became almost Benny Hill level frenetic and increased my enjoyment of it tenfold.
Also, if you're white, well, the Brits are total assholes in this. It's about rebels against the empire. Oh wait... yeah, just don't think about this part too much, any of you. There's one nice Brit. And she's hawt. Focus on her.
This imagines that two of India's historic freedom fighters in the 1920s were friends - Rama Raju and Komaram Bheem. But Rama is a deep cover cop tracking Bheem, who is also in deep cover, disguised as a muslim to rescue little girl kidnapped by those asshole Brits. They bond over the most absurd rescue of a fisher boy, trapped under a bridge where a randomly exploding train is spilling fire everywhere. It's an insane sequence that hardly makes a lick of sense, but it is glorious in its unabashed defiance of logic and physics in pursuit of cinematic action.
There's a dance off against the Brits that is exuberant and explosive. Explosive describes so much in this film - the battle scenes take an almost Michael Bay level of digital explosions and flying bodies. But yeah, great dance scene - it delivers like great Indian cinema should.
Then there's the action. I have this ultravi chuckle when I see something fresh. This got me a few times. The action is so absurd that I loved it, gratuitous slo-mo and all. It's brutal, balletic, sanguineous, and I daresay tongue-in-cheek in some of the coup de graces. That's what yanked me in. Bodies fly in every direction. The first crowd fight - one man against thousands - works astonishingly well. The palace raid had me at the surprise opening charge - like WTH? Are they reallhy going there?!? Dang. I'm all in. The prison break scene reminded me of El Topo in a good way. The action is so over the top that I just revelled in how beautifully and unapologetically dumb it was - almost to the level of high art.
There's one cultural thing to keep in mind that might help you digest this. Rama and Bheem are named after two mythic characters from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata respectively. At a certain point in the film, these historic characters become incarnations or avatars of these gods. This helps to explain their godlike powers as well as many nods to those classic legends. It's kinda like Thor in the MCU. You just got to accept that or it won't make sense. Despite its historical allegory, it's better viewed as a park your brain outside movie.
So yeah, D00M recommended with the caveat to bump up the speed a notch or two. Eager to hear if this works for anyone else here.
But to be specific, RRR is Tollywood - it's a Telugu film, not Bombay (or Mumbai as it's really called), not Hindi. But y'all don't care about that. You want to know if you should check out the biggest budget Indian film made to date. It's also the 3rd highest Indian grosser domestically and the 2nd globally.
Let's cut to the chase - I totally D00M recommend this even though it is a whopping 3+ hours long and has lots of cultural baggage you won't understand. It's got some eye-popping stuff in it - panoramic crowd sequences, ridiculously absurd action, delicious dance numbers, sappy nationalism, and the sort of karmic plot twists so prevalent in Indian cinema that it's well worth the watch. It's deep Tollywood but a good taste of how this genre works.
But let me let you in on a little secret. I've often said that if you set the gratuitous slo-mo so pervasive in Indian cinema to a normal speed, they wouldn't be so freaking long. Netflix lets you do this. There's a function that lets you increase your play speed to 1.5 or 2 (you can also slow it down if your watching it on percoset or something). I bumped it up and hardly noticed, except for a frantic dance number that became almost Benny Hill level frenetic and increased my enjoyment of it tenfold.
Also, if you're white, well, the Brits are total assholes in this. It's about rebels against the empire. Oh wait... yeah, just don't think about this part too much, any of you. There's one nice Brit. And she's hawt. Focus on her.
This imagines that two of India's historic freedom fighters in the 1920s were friends - Rama Raju and Komaram Bheem. But Rama is a deep cover cop tracking Bheem, who is also in deep cover, disguised as a muslim to rescue little girl kidnapped by those asshole Brits. They bond over the most absurd rescue of a fisher boy, trapped under a bridge where a randomly exploding train is spilling fire everywhere. It's an insane sequence that hardly makes a lick of sense, but it is glorious in its unabashed defiance of logic and physics in pursuit of cinematic action.
There's a dance off against the Brits that is exuberant and explosive. Explosive describes so much in this film - the battle scenes take an almost Michael Bay level of digital explosions and flying bodies. But yeah, great dance scene - it delivers like great Indian cinema should.
Then there's the action. I have this ultravi chuckle when I see something fresh. This got me a few times. The action is so absurd that I loved it, gratuitous slo-mo and all. It's brutal, balletic, sanguineous, and I daresay tongue-in-cheek in some of the coup de graces. That's what yanked me in. Bodies fly in every direction. The first crowd fight - one man against thousands - works astonishingly well. The palace raid had me at the surprise opening charge - like WTH? Are they reallhy going there?!? Dang. I'm all in. The prison break scene reminded me of El Topo in a good way. The action is so over the top that I just revelled in how beautifully and unapologetically dumb it was - almost to the level of high art.
There's one cultural thing to keep in mind that might help you digest this. Rama and Bheem are named after two mythic characters from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata respectively. At a certain point in the film, these historic characters become incarnations or avatars of these gods. This helps to explain their godlike powers as well as many nods to those classic legends. It's kinda like Thor in the MCU. You just got to accept that or it won't make sense. Despite its historical allegory, it's better viewed as a park your brain outside movie.
So yeah, D00M recommended with the caveat to bump up the speed a notch or two. Eager to hear if this works for anyone else here.
Shadow boxing the apocalypse