Occasionally, I go outside Hollywood to cover an influential film too interesting to ignore. Indian cinema and its cinematic culture has been running alongside Hollywood for decades. Occasionally there would be YouTube clips of an Indian film that clearly was influenced by a Hollywood blockbuster, and we would be curious but wary of India’s epic runtime and numerous musical numbers, no matter the genre.
Filmmaker S.S. Rajamouli finally erased the boundry between the two cultures with RRR (Rise Roar Revolt), a 187-minute epic period action film with sequences as memorable and rewatchable as a Hollywood blockbuster. They also released behind the scenes documentaries – RRR: Behind & Beyond (2024), Modern Masters: SS Rajamouli (2024) – celebrating the film’s unique vision, steeped in Indian history. The cast includes the familiar western faces of Ray Stevenson and Alison Doody, but nobody can compete to the charisma of leads Ram Charan and N.T. Rama Rao Jr. This makes you want to see more of their movies, along with more from Rajamouli. (His Bāhubali films are the obvious next step.)
And yes, the Musical numbers. I like the friendship anthem between the two leads after they first meet and are walking under the water together, but the clear standout is the Oscar-winning “Naatu Naatu” with its clever use of suspenders. I had to talk about RRR because it contains one of my most-rewatched scenes, when the animals are set loose on the Governor’s party. The effects aren’t 100% there, but that’s okay because the individual action beats are the way the sequence is constructed should be studied by Hollywood filmmakers. It’s why we go to movies.
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