Best films of 2022 in the UK: No 7 – RRR
Sometimes, quantity can be quality. This bracing Indian epic is told in such massive strokes, it made every other action movie this year look timid and unambitious. Where else could you find an anticolonialist dance number, a prison breakout involving a man wielding two rifles while being carried on his friend’s shoulders, or a hero ambushing his enemies’ palace by crashing a truck through the gates and leaping out the back, a flaming torch in each hand, alongside a menagerie of tigers, leopards and other wild animals – in slow motion? The movie is jam-packed with surreally bonkers yet brilliantly orchestrated moments like this, and it’s an utter joy.
Nothing about RRR is small: the size of the crowd scenes, the scale of the battles, the sadistic villainy of the British, the three-hour running time. It was the most expensive Indian movie ever made (an estimated $72m) and it shows. The story is set in the 1920s, during the British Raj, and parallels the journeys of two men who are opposed politically, yet similar in their unbreakable determination and superheroic athleticism. One is Komaram Bheem (NT Rama Rao Jr), who goes to Delhi in search of a girl stolen from his village by the British. The other is Alluri Sitarama Raju (Ram Charan), an Indian Imperial Police officer who is determined to rise to the top – by finding Bheem. In their dual quests, both men assume secret identities and – irony of ironies – they become best buddies! But the bromance is destined not to last.
The plot has more reversals than a Liz Truss government but above all, RRR is about the action. There are onfoot chases, fist fights, crowd fights, gunfights, bow-and-arrow fights, tiger fights … you name it. Granted, it plays to its own laws of physics and probability, and director SS Rajamouli makes liberal and blatant use of CGI, but fortunately he has a keen sense of style, choreography, spatial clarity and narrative purpose, and it all comes together into moments of such ludicrous, air-punching brilliance, your critical defences are useless against it.
A smash hit in India, RRR gained a substantial cinema release in the US, and has earned praise from western film-makers such as JJ Abrams, the Russo brothers, James Gunn and Edgar Wright. Now on Netflix, it has found the global audience it fully deserves.