KITES MOVIE REVIEW

ince the day it was announced, Kites has been surrounded by controversy, rumor, and hype. Directed by Bollywood outsider Anurag Basu working on his first big budget film, Kites was a gamble for producer Rakesh Roshan. Even starring the notoriously dedicated Hrithik Roshan, success was not guaranteed – the lack of proper song picturizations, the unknown heroine, and the foreign setting were all gambles. Not to mention that the cast and crew have been taking every opportunity to remind viewers that Kites is not meant to be a Bollywood film, a strategy that (at best) seems disrespectful to the Bollywood loving crowds who the makers of Kites hope turn up at their screenings. But after seeing the film, none of that matters because Anurag Basu has given us an amazing film which combines the gritty style he perfected in Gangster: A Love Story with a big dose of Rakesh Roshan crowd pleasing élan. In other word, Kites is a pure Bollywood entertainer from start to finish.

The story unfolds through a series of flashbacks in the trademarked Anurag Basu style. When we first meet J (Hrithik Roshan), he is in rough shape – alone, bloodied, and bruised. Soon, we’re whipped back three months to the shiny streets of Las Vegas where we follow J’s quest for financial stability. He falls in with the daughter of a gangster (Kangana Ranaut) and seems set for life until he meets his future sister-in-law Kangana Ranaut (Barbara Mori) and sparks fly. Through a series of misunderstandings and bad choices, Natasha and J end up on the run together and end up further igniting the flames the passion.

Anurag’s script is very clever and he often sets up scenes that appear to be resolving one way only to flip it around and totally foil the audience’s expectations. He walks the tightrope between earnest and ironic as nimbly as Pran in Don, never falling too far to one side or the other. For every scene that is gleeful in its campy ridiculousness (an old-fashioned Western saloon shoot out, for example) there is one that touches the heart with its emotional sincerity. And J and his Mexican paramour journey from the cliched love-at-first-sight fantasy couple to a pair of lovers who will willingly risk their lives for one another. While the plot of Kites is a delicious, but manufactured confection, the emotion laid out between J and Natasha is the real and honest core of the film.

And the actors are more than up to the challenges laid out by Anurag. Hrithik Roshan is every inch the star of the film but he doesn’t play the invulnerable Bollywood hero. Much like in Jodhaa-Akbar, his grand heroics are tempered by scenes of emotional vulnerability. Matching him in everything except dancing is Barbara Mori, who was quite the revelation. She has a natural charisma and charm that comes across even as she has to communicate in broken English. The supporting cast is also excellent from Kangana’s spoiled daughter act to Nicholas Brown’s sultry gangster and Kabir Bedi’s gruff casino owner.

As for the music, there is one fantastic dance number early on in the film (‘Fire’) featuring Kangana and Hrithik, since it seems that Anurag subscribes to the sensible school of film making in which one never casts Bollywood’s best danceer without giving him at least one dance number. The other songs were picturized over montages and worked well in context. The surprised standout was ‘Kites in the Sky’, sung by Hrithik himself. While the song had not impressed as a standalone track, seen as part of the film, it is a touching and emotional song. Hrithik’s untrained vocals lend an air of earnestness and simplicity to the scene that a professional would not have been able to capture.

While the film certainly has the potential to cross over to an international audience, whether it does or not is irrelevant because the Kites team have proven that it is possible to make a film that interprets mainstream Bollywood in all its big budget glory into a film style that works on both the world stage and at home