(This is a review of the Hindi dubbed version of RRR)
A man after being bitten by a poisonous snake breaks a wall with his own fist! When he's on death row and in solitary confinement he does push ups! Someone else has his legs broken but takes ferocious leaps in the air to kill his target! SS Rajamouli’s 3-hour-long, hypnotic spectacle RRR is made up of many such moments that nudge us to suspend our disbelief. “Load, aim and shoot! “ - that’s what Rajamouli’s screenplay and K V Vijayendra Prasad’s story is all about unencumbered as it is by the need to be historically accurate or even logical for that matter. The only way to have fun then is to unquestioningly surrender yourself to this ambitious setup where the directors’s mastery over his craft is never in doubt.
RRR is set in the 1920s and revolves around the lives of two revolutionaries – Alluri Seetharama Raju who waged an armed campaign against the British and Komaram Bheem a tribal from the Gond tribe who fought against atrocities heaped on his people. There is no historical evidence to show that the two ever met or fought together but Rajamouli reimagines history and weaves a story around their meeting.
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Jr NTR plays Komaram Bheem, while Ram Charan plays Alluri Seetharama Raju and Ajay Devgn, Alia Bhatt, Shriya Saran, Makrand Deshpande all have extended cameos.
The action is all guns and teer kamaan blazing. Nothing is off limits . From our heroes with superhuman capabilities to the brute force of animals, computer generated but roaring and growling, there is never a dull moment in the almost 1 hour 45 mins long pre-interval duration. Watch out for the Naacho Naacho song and the spell-binding choreography which makes it impossible to look away. Jr NTR and Ram Charan with their vociferous performances and easy camaraderie leave us enthralled. The plot itself is wafer thin. Bheem wants to rescue a little girl forcefully taken away by a certain Lord Scott and his cruel wife. Charan playing the loyal servant to the Crown must do all he can to arrest him. Both fight each other till they realise that they share a common enemy all along. But it’s only Rajamouli who can conjure up the visual magic that makes us want to stay with their story even when it at times appears over zestful and melodramatic .
RRR is made for a big screen viewing. The cinematography and visual aesthetics paint every frame in a radiating manner. Oodles of flamboyance is something one has come to expect from Rajamouli now. The background score thuds with relentless urgency and repetition, unapologetically melodramatic and quite smitten with itself. It numbs us into submission but post-interval as the pace falters a little, the pleasures dwindle too.
Leavened with rousing crowd pleasing ingredients RRR plays to our patriotic sentiments. It remains a film that makes us gawk and marvel at the thrilling visual ride. For us to suspend our disbelief the film must also write its way past the contrivances. This is where it falters. So even though parts of RRR seem Ridiculous and Reductive it's also absolutely Ravishing and for that it deserves to be seen and enjoyed.
Rating: 3 Quints out of 5.
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