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If you've grown tired of or lost your taste for superhero movies, well...Madonna's album from 1984 comes to mind. While revolutionaries Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem, whose conjectural friendship this movie depicts, were just human beings, this movie, which portrays the former of being able to nab assailants from angry mobs like needles from haystacks and the latter as capable of outrunning and throwing big cats, will lead you to believe otherwise. As the 45-minute pre-title sequence indicates, the pair begin on every opposing side possible, with Raju employed by the imperial police and Bheem being the kind of tribal leader his position was created to apprehend. After an extraordinary action scene involving a train accident, the pair becomes the best of friends, which leads to Bheem leveraging his pal's clearance to rescue a girl Raju's employers kidnapped from his village. What follows is an epic in all senses of the word in which every kind of bond imaginable - friendship, loyalty, even matrimonial, etc. - is tested, and that is hardly subtle about the enemy that is wholly responsible: imperialism.
If the fact that fans have taken the action and song & dance scenes and posted them on YouTube, made GIFs out of them, turned them into memes, etc. leads you to believe they're all the movie has going for it, think again. I have no qualms about saying that Raju and Bheem's friendship is the best male friendship in a movie since Frodo and Sam's in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I'm not sure if their chemistry, the casting or simply their strong acting deserves most of the credit, but I totally bought into the sincerity of their friendship, which in turn makes the moments in which they are at odds so painful that it's almost criminal. It's for this reason why nothing between the "good stuff" ever seems like fluff or filler. I found genuine intrigue in everything from Raju and Bheem's opposing investigations to the revelations of their backstories. The high quality of the craft - especially the cinematography - also makes every moment watchable, and while there is (obvious) CGI - which I'm normally not a fan of - the glorious, not to mention humane purposes to which the movie employs it shut off my nitpicking impulses. Also, regardless of your level of Anglophilia, you are bound to approve of how the movie makes you love to hate its villains. Whether it’s the massive and immaculate presentation of their facilities - one being the Mariinskyi Palace in Ukraine, no less - or how devious Ray Stevenson makes Governor Scott, they approach a cartoonish level of evil, but in the best way.
Since I've heaped so much praise upon this movie, why haven't I given it the vaunted five-star rating? Based on the hype and all the other five-star reviews I've read, I went in with expectations that I’d be seeing one of the best movies I've ever watched. While I wouldn't go that far, I obviously still consider it great, and the important thing is that more Indian movies have appeared on my watchlist and I have viewed some of my favorite moments on YouTube more than once, which is something I rarely do after watching any movie. Speaking of, if you have also done this before watching this, I don't think you have spoiled the experience for yourself. I watched the "Naatu Naatu" scene and have seen many GIFs made from other scenes many times before watching the entire movie, and I had an even bigger smile on my face when I saw them again and not just because of the additional context.
If you've grown tired of or lost your taste for superhero movies, well...Madonna's album from 1984 comes to mind. While revolutionaries Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem, whose conjectural friendship this movie depicts, were just human beings, this movie, which portrays the former of being able to nab assailants from angry mobs like needles from haystacks and the latter as capable of outrunning and throwing big cats, will lead you to believe otherwise. As the 45-minute pre-title sequence indicates, the pair begin on every opposing side possible, with Raju employed by the imperial police and Bheem being the kind of tribal leader his position was created to apprehend. After an extraordinary action scene involving a train accident, the pair becomes the best of friends, which leads to Bheem leveraging his pal's clearance to rescue a girl Raju's employers kidnapped from his village. What follows is an epic in all senses of the word in which every kind of bond imaginable - friendship, loyalty, even matrimonial, etc. - is tested, and that is hardly subtle about the enemy that is wholly responsible: imperialism.
If the fact that fans have taken the action and song & dance scenes and posted them on YouTube, made GIFs out of them, turned them into memes, etc. leads you to believe they're all the movie has going for it, think again. I have no qualms about saying that Raju and Bheem's friendship is the best male friendship in a movie since Frodo and Sam's in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I'm not sure if their chemistry, the casting or simply their strong acting deserves most of the credit, but I totally bought into the sincerity of their friendship, which in turn makes the moments in which they are at odds so painful that it's almost criminal. It's for this reason why nothing between the "good stuff" ever seems like fluff or filler. I found genuine intrigue in everything from Raju and Bheem's opposing investigations to the revelations of their backstories. The high quality of the craft - especially the cinematography - also makes every moment watchable, and while there is (obvious) CGI - which I'm normally not a fan of - the glorious, not to mention humane purposes to which the movie employs it shut off my nitpicking impulses. Also, regardless of your level of Anglophilia, you are bound to approve of how the movie makes you love to hate its villains. Whether it’s the massive and immaculate presentation of their facilities - one being the Mariinskyi Palace in Ukraine, no less - or how devious Ray Stevenson makes Governor Scott, they approach a cartoonish level of evil, but in the best way.
Since I've heaped so much praise upon this movie, why haven't I given it the vaunted five-star rating? Based on the hype and all the other five-star reviews I've read, I went in with expectations that I’d be seeing one of the best movies I've ever watched. While I wouldn't go that far, I obviously still consider it great, and the important thing is that more Indian movies have appeared on my watchlist and I have viewed some of my favorite moments on YouTube more than once, which is something I rarely do after watching any movie. Speaking of, if you have also done this before watching this, I don't think you have spoiled the experience for yourself. I watched the "Naatu Naatu" scene and have seen many GIFs made from other scenes many times before watching the entire movie, and I had an even bigger smile on my face when I saw them again and not just because of the additional context.