For the first time in my life, I watched an Indian Blockbuster in a cinema. Whilst it wasn’t the full experience I had imagined, the cinema is the only place you should see RRR‘s bombastic stunts and melodramatic bromance.
The Experience
In hindsight, choosing to watch RRR as a Sunday matinee wasn’t the best choice. The Cinemark 18 + XD in Los Angeles was almost as empty as the mall it sits within, which is itself a forgotten mall, across the 405 from the much more popular Fox Hills Westfield Mall. There’s no real need for this mall or the Cinemark itself, as the theater chain has since built a more modern location in Playa Vista just 2 miles away. However, the distinguishing factor of this Cinemark location is that it has become the only theater on the West Side of Los Angeles (Cinemark or otherwise) that consistently screens new Indian releases each week. So if you want to watch Indian films in the city on the big screen and don’t reside in the Valleys or the O.C., this is your best option.
The theater was screening RRR in each of the languages it had dialogue specially written for (Telugu, Hindi, and Tamil), but as Telugu was the original production, we went for that screening. I’m not sure how widely each of the languages are spoken in Los Angeles, so not sure if the Tamil or Hindi screenings might have been more busy, but the Telugu Sunday matinee screening was almost empty. There were just a few families with toddlers and infants for company. As a result, we never heard an audience response to the movie, apart from applause at the end. The only sounds coming from the audience that we could hear were from the kids’ tablets that their parents had given them after they announced they wanted to go home around 30 minutes before the intermission (this film is not for everyone). However, this was never much of a problem for us, because, to the probable detriment to our ears, this film was blasted through the speakers at a noticeably higher decibel level than your typical Hollywood screening. The loud but empty cinema made it feel like we’d arrived early to a music concert. With a crowd, this would have been special.
The FIlm
Despite the small crowd, the film itself was completely at home on the big screen. It’s an action film that the Superhero addicted Hollywood studios have become afraid to make: a completely original story with a big budget. But to be fair to Hollywood, this film wasn’t made by just anyone. It was made by S.S. Rajamouli, one of the biggest name directors in India. He’s the guy that made the #2 and #8 highest grossing Indian films in Baahubali 1 and 2.
Costing $72M, RRR is the second most expensive Indian film ever made (behind S. Shankar’s 2.0). The high budget is evident in the incredible action scenes and CGI – which, whilst still slightly behind the quality of the Hollywood CGI, already looks much better than the Baahubali films. If this is what $72M makes, imagine what the budget of the $356M Avengers Endgame could produce. That is if you can imagine anything being more action-packed and epic than RRR.
There’s so many big moments in this film. It starts with three hard-hitting chapters which introduce ‘The Story,’ ‘The Fire,’ and ‘The Water.’ The Story is the premise – a child from rural India gets ‘bought’ by the English colonial governor to the heart-break of their mother and village. The Fire is the introduction to our villain – a loyal and determined member of the colonial police that single handedly takes on an entire mob of around 1,000 people in one of the film’s best action scenes. The Water introduces us to the kidnapped girls hope at rescue – a man from the forest that protects those that inhabit it. He demonstrates his action chops by taking down a tiger. Even though each of these scenes hits hard and gives you an adrenaline shot to kick start this 3 hour action bromance, neither are the film’s best action scenes. There are just too many action scenes to highlight, which we’ll leave for you to experience.
The only moments that took me out of the zone were the intermission and the ‘Naatu Naatu’ dance scene which both doesn’t fit the period or the serious action/cheesy tone that the film had already established. Plus the nod to Black culture by tokenizing a Black drummer (the only Black character in the film) just feels awkward. But luckily the film quickly resumes the melodrama and action pretty soon after both scenes to build the adrenaline and emotional connection back up. This is the ultimate ‘Theme Park‘ movie that needs to be seen on the big screen.
The Future
Before the pandemic, there was a John Woo double feature at The Aero in Santa Monica. It featured The Killer and Hardboiled, two stylish (and often cheesy) classics of the action-film genre. They’re both incredibly fun films to watch, and it was even more fun to watch them with a full audience that responded to the film’s iconic moment with cheers and shouts of appreciation. I believe S.S. Rajamouli deserves the same love that The Aero afforded John Woo. It may sound strange saying this as S.S. Rajamouli is a hugely popular director around the world that has drawn a relatively massive box-office total. But, whilst his films are massive in India, they haven’t found much of a cross-over audience amongst film fans in the U.S. Like John Woo, his films are iconic, melodramatic, action films that are best experienced with friends or a crowd. They should be seen by all action and superhero film fans, but I’ll be happy if they manage to form a cult corner like John Woo managed to do, and screen to sell-out shows in Art-House cinemas in the not too distant future.
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