India during British colonial rule, 1 9 2 0. After hearing her singing, British Governor Scott buys girl Malli from the Gond tribe in the Adilabad rainforest for his wife. Malli’s brother Bheem travels to Delhi to try to save her. The British hire ambitious Telugu officer Rama Raju serving in the Indian Imperial Police to catch Bheem before he can enter the castle with the British administration. Not knowing each other’s true identity, Raju and Bheem become friends as civilians. Raju even helps Bheem try to charm a British woman. Upon Bheem’s attack on the castle, Raju has him arrested and whipped publicly on the city square. Raju is promoted, but he uses this only to get to the weapons’ storage facility, since he is secretly working on India’s independence. Raju saves Bheem from execution, who in turn later saves Raju from solitary confinement, in a shootout which kills Scott and destroys the British outpost. Raju, his fiancé Sita, Bheem and Malli return to the Gond tribe.
The Telugu movie that overshadowed Hindi cinema in India, "RRR" is a movie whose first hour is so good that the viewers wish that they got something better than the follow-up second and third hour, which don't quite stay true to it. The director S. S. Rajamouli crafts an outstanding, excellent first hour in the film, demonstrating a totally different aesthetic and rule than the Hollywood establishment, since everything is insanely exaggerated and hyper-stylized, but precisely because of that also insanely fresh and creative. Two legendary "character-intros" of the two protagonists—thousands of Indians riot arround a British military outpost, one of them throws a stone across the fence and it hits and destroys the photo of the British Governor, so the British Indian officer inside, Raju (charismatic Ram Charan), jumps over the 12 ft tall barbed wire of the fence, fights with dozens of protestors in the crowd, arrests the perpetrator and brings him inside the outpost for punishment; Bheem holds two ropes with his bare hands which are restraining a tiger captured in a trap around two trees inside the rainforest—reach almost the stylization of animes. The action sequences are on a level never expected from Indian cinema til date, since they are modern, sharp and addictingly thrilling, creating their very own world where over-the-top become means of expressive art. The "rule of cool" is the only thing that matters here. The dance contest featuring the song "Naatu Naatu", filmed around the Mariinsky Palace in Kyiv, is irresistibly happy and contagiously positive, staying both true to the Indian obssession with musical elements and universal for the outside audience who are just there to experience joie de vivre.
The second and the third hour are a lot weaker, though, and never quite reach that high impression of the first one, which becomes a deposit for the overstretched middle part. After said "Naatu Naatu", the next 90 minutes of the film are substandard: everything is too melodramatic, campy, with black-and-white depictions of British as evil, undue Indian nationalism, excessive moments and ridiculous ideas—for instance, a man with his hands tied behind his back taps on the floor to attract a cobra (?), then captures it (!) and throws it behind himself at his opponent; a truck breaks into the garden of a castle, releasing Bheem with a dozen CGI deers, tigers and bears which attack the British, featuring even a trashy scene of Bheem impaling a hand of a British soldier on the antlers of a poor deer; Raju whips Bheem publicly on the city square, while Bheem just carelessly sings a song about Mother Earth (?!). It is also highly illogical that Raju didn't tell Bheem that he is a double agent and secretly on his side, promoting Indian independence, which is strained just to have a forced "plot twist" in the third hour, though this does not fit into Raju's behavior up to that moment. It would have made more sense if Bheem's plight caused Raju to transform as a character. "RRR" thus sluggishly continues all until the last 30 minutes, when it is again rejuvenated by a great action finale in which the two protagonists join forces against the British soldiers—the sight of Bheem holding Raju on his shoulders, Raju shooting with rifles, and then lowering the rifles for Bheem to charge them with his hands sounds preposterous on paper, but surprisingly works on the screen due to Rajamouli's sheer enthusiasm and cinematic infatuation with this whole story. It's a pity the movie has no humor, and it would have worked better if it was actually more subtle and less bombastic (for instance, the scene where it is revealed that Raju had a brother who ate with his left hand, just like Bheem), but it is still a notable upgrade for Telugu / Indian cinema, a movie that stays true to its own original vision and stands its ground, no matter what others will think about it: it's a three-hour climax.
Grade:+++
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