Kites

Touted to be the first Bollywood film for the Global audience, Kites marks the grand return of a superstar who has been missing from action for a long time now. Hrithik Roshan returns with a Mexican leading lady Barbara Mori in this Anurag Basu directed film. 

Kites begin with a wanted man stranded in the middle of a desert. He is J (Hrithik Roshan), a crook who has married many girls to get them green cards. Natasha (Barbara Mori) is one of them. Cut to the next scene, both have found their partners; J has Gina (Kangana Ranaut), daughter of a wealthy and most influential casino owner and Natasha is engaged to Tony, who is Gina's brother.

Fate has something else in store for J and Natasha, as both falls head over heels in love with each other. What will they choose? Love or money? Stay safe or risk their lives?

Kites, like almost all movies produced by Rakesh Roshan, is a combination of romance, action, comedy and a bit of thrill. But Kites disappoints mainly because of the lack of a proper storyline. The writing is poor, you wait for a twist something as effective as the one in Basu's very own Gangster, and it never comes. You wait for some dialogues in Hindi, but all you get is an English - Spanish film.

The story of J and Natasha is very predictable, the pace is slow, the dialogues are cheesy and the editing not quite up to the mark. However, the action sequences have been brilliantly shot. The choreography and Hrithik's moves are awe-inspiring, certainly one of the highlights of the film.

The performances are outstanding as well. Hrithik is magic on screen in a near-perfect performance. He emotes well, performs the action scenes with ease and his chemistry with Barbara Mori is something to watch out for. Talking of Barbara, she's fantastic and holds her own against Hrithik. One of the best performances by a foreign leading lady making her debut in a Bollywood film, never easy! Nick Brown is surprisingly good. Kangana Ranaut has nothing to do.

To sum up, Kites requires a bit of patience. Watch it without any distractions and you might just about like it.

Film: "Kites"; Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Barbara Mori, Kangana Ranaut, Kabir Bedi, Nick Brown; Director: Anurag Basu; Music: Rajesh Roshan; Producer : Rakesh Roshan

Too many strings attached to this "Kites" that never soars to the heights it should and becomes a predictable tale of star-crossed lovers set in the glittering lights of Las Vegas and the brooding deserts of Mexico. It's "Matchpoint", "Bonny and Clyde" and much else rolled into one, failing to take off on its own.

The problem with "Kites" is that it is never truly its own film. The first half constantly takes you back to Woody Allen's compelling "Matchpoint" with the doomed quartet of Jai (Hrithik), his girlfriend Gina (Kangana Ranaut), her brother Tony (Nick Brown) and his fiancée Natasha (Barbara).

Life is set to roll for the rakish, down and out Jai with Gina, the fabulously rich, hopelessly in love daughter of a Vegas casino owner, until he meets Natasha, the exotic Mexican immigrant also looking out for the good life. The attraction is inevitable - and fatal.

The pull is irresistible. Designer watches, flashy cars and jewels beckon but Jai and Natasha are caught in a relationship that transcends language. She knows no English and he knows no Spanish.

So far so good, before the script decides to meander into a "Bonny and Clyde" caper with the couple on the run from the powerful Tony robbing a bank. Completely unnecessary and giving no time for the intensity of the romance to develop.

The narrative moves back and forth in time, beginning with a bloodied Jai tumbling out of a train wagon and stumbling across the desertscape to look for his ladylove.

So you get a sense of what is in store. The predictability of the script is not really a problem - the opening line of the film lays the tenor, with Jai in a voiceover telling you that two kites flying together can never soar very high or very long because one has to get cut.

This is a chronicle of a tragedy foretold, much in the way of other epic romances. Dare I say Romeo Juliet!

It could have worked. The much talked about chemistry between the lead couple is in evidence, but not enough. Director Anurag Basu is at his best in the intimate scenes.

Like when Jai looks out of his window to see Natasha being roughed up by Tony and goes to comfort her. There are no words but the shadow play on the wall of their fingers intertwining is romance as it should be.

The soul of true love is there somewhere, but it gets lost in the two-hour film that also brings in murder, torture and gunmen galore. Basu seems lost in the larger macro frame of the film.

The two main characters are not fleshed out enough, and the others around them are like caricatures. How many Bobs (Kabir Bedi as the powerful, ruthless casino owner who does not balk at shooting down cheaters) have we seen, or Tonys, the archetypal jealous boyfriend with an army of goons behind him?

Many loosely scripted scenes as well and gaps that really should have been filled for a lucid narrative. A script doctor was badly need to stitch up the loose ends.

But the superb cinematography of "Kites" that has the look of a truly international film, Rajesh Roshan's lilting music -- "Zindagi, zindagi" is true winner -- and some heartwarming moments score.

Barbara Mori also strikes a chord, and she's a real good looker. But the best for the last -- Hrithik Roshan looks better than he has in any other film, and with him dominating virtually every frame, this one is a treat for his fans. Go swoon, if you must.

Two people (Hrithik Roshan, Barbara Mori), respectively romance another from the same family (Kangana Ranaut, Nicholas Brown), purely for the love of the money. The girl’s an illegal immigrant into the US from Mexico. The boy is the American half of various green card marriages on sale: “$1,000; honeymoon charges extra.”

Both gatecrash into a Mafia home, hoping to settle in with the riches. The premise from hereon could take the shape of a slight comedy of deceit (Woody Allen’s Matchpoint), or follow an aggressive drama (Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr Ripley).

This is, but, a ‘massy’ desi movie. The said Mafiosi home belongs to one, Bob Grover (Kabir Bedi), the “owner of one of the biggest casinos in Vegas,” no less. Senators, governors etc swim under Bob’s pant pockets – “Vegas mein Bob ko koi naa nahin kehta (No one says no to Bob in Vegas).” You sense what’s replaced the ‘Singhania group of industries, and villas with spiral staircases in Bollywood’? Vast expanses of a fake First World, peopled by butlers in BMWs and Indians alone.

The attempt, of course, is still to please you with the masala. The screenplay tightly alternates genres: romance before action, a little comedy, after a crackling chase sequence….

The story is credited to the producer Rakesh Roshan. When given the story idea to adapt into a screenplay, the director suggests in an interview, he couldn’t see a two-hour film in it. That, sort of, shows. Neatly lined assemblage of some really fine shots, can often conceal a lot of the hollowness in a script. It helped for the producer that the director he chose was Anurag Basu.

Few filmmakers in mainstream Bollywood light up their screens the way Basu does (Gangster, Life In A Metro). His patent colour, you can tell, is deep red, and favoured scenes concern rains, with strong back lighting; or a top shot looking into a city from a ledge. Basu’s greatest achievement as an aesthete may well be making Emraan Hashmi look good (Murder).

It helps far more for the director that the leading man before him this time’s Hrithik Roshan: hair blonde-dyed, body sharp and straight like blade, flexi like rubber, suitably under-stated in its moves. No Hindi film actor ever, I suspect, has worked himself up this much to make the super-star grade. Hrithik remains the perfect foil for an action piece across the barrenness of Nevada. It matters little that we know nothing of his character, besides his insane love for a girl, and an extreme sense of adventure.

The film, as you may already know, is largely in English. The hero attempts an accent that is more confused than American. The heroine speaks in Spanish, which is sub-titled into English; something only a minority of Bollywood's core audiences can satisfyingly read. This should be of concern to financiers of this Rs 140 crore bonanza, or those who closely follow box-office numbers. The language alone turns it into a cut-piece made neither wholly for Peter, nor quite for Patel.

It’s a passionately romantic pic, or at least hyped as one in ways that few films can live up to. The expression of that intense love, its most important element, is often lost in translation - what many might rightly perceive as lack of chemistry between the leading pair.