The action blockbuster you should be watching this summer doesn’t involve superheroes or Top Gun pilots.
But what RRR (Netflix) lacks in homogeneous Marvel sheen and Tom Cruise’s shiny teeth it more than makes up for in truly eye-popping action scenes that have to be seen to be disbelieved.
RRR, a three-hour historical epic set in colonial India, tells the story of undercover cop Rama’s (Ram Charan) pursuit of revolutionary Bheem (Rama Rao Jr).
Now, I can quite appreciate that the words “three-hour historical epic set in colonial India” may not sound like the kind of thing that will get your heart pumping, but trust me when I say that RRR is like no other action film I’ve seen in years.
This is a movie with a scene where a motorbike is brandished like a sword. In another rebels attack a moustache-twirling British military leader’s posh garden party not with weapons or bombs but with a menagerie of wild animals.
TV Review: RRR is five movies in one
Being an Indian film, in between all the balletic and barmy action sequences – which have no interest in such piffling things as the laws of physics – we also get musical and dance numbers that are pure Bollywood dreamland and will make you gasp.
For someone reared on the rhythms of western action movies, the unexpected (and sometimes truly bonkers) twists and turns in RRR were a revelation. In some ways, it feels like five blockbusters for the price of one – technicolour musical, old-fashioned action-adventure, feelgood bromance, period drama and war film.
If you’re the kind of person who’ll sometimes scoff at the screen and say “Well that would NEVER happen”, stay away from RRR.
Our heroes leap through space and time as explosions, bullets, arrows, trains and tigers spin through the air in slow motion – and that kind of thing either puts a massive smile on your face or it doesn’t.
Me? I didn’t stop grinning for three hours.
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