As long time readers know, I love Indian special effects extravaganzas, movies starring Shahrukh Khan, and thinly veiled retellings of the Ramayana, so yes, I was really looking forward to Ra.One (2011). It isn’t quite what I was expecting, though; I thought it would be Bollywood Tron, steeped in cultural references, and instead I got a Bollywood remake of that episode of Star Trek where Geordi accidentally brings Moriarty to life. As a reviewer, where am I supposed to go with that?
Khan plays software designer Shekhar Subramanium, who is a lucky, lucky nerd. Sure, he’s clumsy, socially awkward, and has a terrible haircut, but he’s married to the lovely and intelligent Sonia (Kareena Kapoor), he has a great job at a large electronics firm in London, and he’s a fantastic dancer. The only problem is that his son Prateek (Armaan Verma) doesn’t respect him.
When Shekhar and his team are assigned to create a new videogame for the Indian market, Shekhar sees a chance to change that. Prateek thinks heroes are lame and villains are cool, so Shekhar designs a game around Ra.One, the coolest villain ever, a bad guy who can never be beaten. And of course there’s no way that could possibly go horribly wrong, unless they designed the Ra.One character as a separate program which is capable of learning and adapting to the game, and the company was also working on a system for projecting digital information into the real world without the need for a screen. And what are the odds of that?
(The video game featured in the movie is, as you’ve probably guessed, terrible. It’s a fighting game with one protagonist, one opponent, and one backdrop – basically a fancy version of Pong. Like in Toonpur Ka Superhero the game has three short levels so that our protagonists can play through the entire game at the climax without the movie being fifty hours long; unlike Toonpur at least all three levels come from the same game here. As lame as the game itself is, though, the hardware involved, and especially the adaptive antagonist, would be revolutionary.)
Work on the game moves quickly, and the company holds a party to celebrate the game’s completion. While the adults drink and have a dance number, Prateek insists on trying out the game for himself – he’s nearly won when it’s time to go home, so the game is shut off. And then everything goes horribly wrong. Ra.One, who cannot accept defeat, uses the company’s technology to enter the real world, uses his shape changing and mind control powers to kill and impersonate Akashi (Tom Wu), Shekhar’s coworker, and goes in search of “Lucifer,” which happens to be Prateek’s gaming handle. Shekhar quickly realizes what has happened and tries to stop Ra.One by claiming to be Lucifer, but Ra.One doesn’t believe him and kills him anyway.
Grief stricken, Sonia decides to take her son back to India. Prateek, meanwhile, is convinced that his father didn’t die in an accident, he was killed by Ra.One; investigating the labs, he quickly learns that he’s right, and that Ra.One is on the way. He tries to pull the hero of the video game, G.One (who was modeled on Shekhar) out of the game as a protector, but without apparent success. And then Prateek is finally caught . . . by Sonia. Unfortunately, Ra.One is close behind.
After a lengthy and destructive car chase through the streets of London, Ra.One catches up with mother and son, but G.One appears at the last moment and apparently defeats Ra.One, who collapses into a pile of shiny cubes and is buried under the road. With nowhere else to go, G.One joins Sonia and Prateek as they travel to India.
The family quickly settle into life in India, though Sonia is a littler disturbed by the superpowered robot with her dead husband’s face hanging around the house. Still, he’s useful, and before long sparks are literally flying.
Before they can get too comfortable, though, Ra.One reforms, this time taking the face of a male model from a nearby billboard (Arjun Rampal). He quickly tracks the family back to India and mayhem ensues.
This movie looks fantastic. The production design is spot on, the action sequences are kinetic but shot without a trace of shakeycam, and only a few of them are ripped off from The Matrix and Terminator 2. Prateek’s opening dream sequence, which features Khan as Lucifer as long-haired Final Fantasy-styled prettyboy using his oversized sword to fight Sanjay Dutt on the Moon is amazing.
as impressive as the visuals are, though, I was left feeling a bit . . . unfulfilled. the movie rushes from gorgeous set piece to gorgeous set piece without really giving the characters time to react to anything, so the whole picture is lacking in context. There are moments of pathos, but they’re mostly crammed into a song and then forgotten about. The lack of feeling is particularly jarring because this movie stars the Rajah of Relationships, the Maestro of Melodrama, the Tzar of Manly Tears, but for most of the film he’s playing an emotionless robot.
I can understand the lack of melodrama because this movie is clearly aimed at the younger set, and adolescent boys are not known for their interest in interpersonal drama and talking about feelings. My real problem with Ra.One is that the movie keeps introducing interesting ideas, and then refuses to follow up on any of them. For example, there’s a wonderful character bit where Prateek takes a handful of his father’s ashes and, instead of immersing them in the river, he sticks them in his pocket. It’s a great character bit which could be used to set up either some genuinely satisfying character development or an emotionally manipulative sci-fi climax (or both!) but it is never mentioned again.
(I don’t mind the Chitti cameo, though, because it’s so gratuitous and bizarre. It’s like Batman popping up in the new Spider-Man movie to have a cup of coffee, and then leaving.)
I’m a little frustrated. I want to like Ra.One, and I guess I do, but I’m afraid it will always be my second favorite Indian movie about robots.
