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I haven’t seen a lot of Indian movies but that is something I might need to rectify, especially after this. RRR is amazing.

The initials in the title stand for Roudram Ranam Rudhiram which translates loosely as Fury War Blood although for the international market they have said it is Rise Roar Revolt so as to stick with the alliteration. Both work though as the story sees two Indian freedom fighters, apparently on opposing sides but not knowing it, battling fervently against the cruelty of British occupation in the 1920s. These guys are totally off the chain (they do use chains as weapons, and sticks and ropes and guns, fireworks, arrows, motorcycles, masonry and on occasion even wild animals) and there is plenty of all six of those words all the way through.

RRR is a mainstream Indian film and delivers everything that goes with that; as well the human drama and extreme violence it also has musical numbers and there is the obligatory big dance sequence at the end. To a Western audience it may also seem cheesy at times, there are lots of shots with smoke and back lighting that look like outtakes from an 80s pop video, some of the exaggerated acting would not look out place in a silent film, the politics and history are over simplified (it is based on real people) and much of the imagery is a little on the nose.

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No, subtlety is not something you should come looking for here. There is an extended montage of the two men becoming friends that really lays it on thick and quickly becomes heavily homoerotic in a way I don’t think was intended.

All of this is just the conventions of this type of film making though and just because I am not totally used to that I am not going to dismiss it. Around all of this, which is all immensely enjoyable no matter how it comes across, the movie also gives the audience the most breathtaking action scenes. The choreography of the fist fights and the orchestration of the chases and the gunplay are like nothing I have seen before. There is one sequence with a truck and a group of jungle creatures that genuinely made my jaw drop. The fact that at any moment the story might break into one of these moments or an equally enthusiastic group dance scene only adds to the joy. It does it in its own way but RRR provides pretty much everything that cinema has to offer with an infectious confidence and commitment that escapes most other films. It has acrobatics to rival Jackie Chan, bow work to dwarf Legolas, explosions to shame Michael Bay and bravado to truly show Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson who the real boss is. Still thought it does it all with immense likability and sincerity. Somehow there is an honesty and genuine charm to all the incessant male posturing and I’ve never thought that in an American movie. The soundtrack cues are also off the chart, it is like the score is telling me what to think and feel at every point and I am quite happily going with all of it like an obedient, non questioning child in awe of an older sibling. I may not have seen a lot of Bollywood or Tollywood films (this is the latter because it is in the Telugu language) but I’ve seen a fair few films and this is exceptional. I cannot tell you what a good time I had with it.

I may well search out more films of this ilk then but from what I understand this is exceptional even in its home country. It is certainly the most expensive Indian film ever made (although with a $72 million price tag it is a lot cheaper than a lot of Hollywood movies who have done much less with more money). It was phenomenally well reviewed in all continents it screened in and broke various box office records in Andhra and Telangana. It is currently the the fourth-highest-grossing Indian film worldwide and the second highest spoken in Telugu. For most regions of the UK it has been consigned to Netflix which doesn’t seem entirely right but at least you can watch it at home right now. It also appears to be the magnum opus of celebrated director S. S. Rajamouli who with three films in the top five grossing Indian films is essentially the country’s James Cameron. Mind you a sequel is apparently on the way so we’ll see how this compares then. I’ll be watching it for sure.

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The Ripley Factor:

As stated I am no great authority on this but I fear the women are marginalised a little even by this film industry’s standards; this is most certainly a male centred story. To be fair though the two main female characters it does feature have agency and do drive the plot forward. The camera doesn’t linger on them as much as I have seen in a number of Bollywood/Tollywood film dance numbers either. There is less midriff on show for what that’s worth.

One of the women is the lost love of one of the heroes but does become active toward the end and the other looks like she wandered off the set of Downton Abbey. She is the one good English person among a whole race of people who are otherwise totally demonised, which might be racist if it were another nationality but we did colonise the country for eighty nine years and were guilty of plenty of racism and atrocities so we can’t really moan that we are essentially depicted as Nazis. We do get the Raj Lady Mary to show we’re not all bad.