Bollywood hits the big screen in a big way Friday with the release of Kites on 2,000 screens around the world, including 200 in North America.
Billed as the widest release for any Bollywood production, and thus designed to offer something for everyone, the film is a violent Wild West gangster fantasy romance – with musical numbers, of course.
Kites follows the trajectory of Jai (or “J” as he’s referred to in the subtitles), played by matinée idol Hrithik Roshan (Dhoom: 2). J’s father, Bollywood blockbuster director Rakesh Roshan, came up with the film’s star-crossed-lovers theme after watching the movement of two kites in the sky.
J is a cool, handsome and extremely buff (as seen in several no-shirt scenes) immigrant operator living in Las Vegas, where he teaches dance classes and hustles extra cash by gambling and marrying young women who want green cards.
He is always looking the other way when Lady Luck comes to call, as he explains in his pervasive and annoying English voice-over.
But when we first meet J, he rolls like a dead weight out of a hay-filled boxcar wearing a mariachi cowboy suit. Must have been a rough night. He’s been shot, it turns out.
After an old farmer patches him up, J staggers in borrowed clothes across the Mexican frontier toward the train station to look for his cellphone (I kid you not). He reads a short message from the woman he loves, who is obviously connected to whatever nasty business put a bullet in his back.
The main action unravels events that begin three months earlier, when J hits what looks like a winning streak. He starts dating the daughter of a wealthy casino tycoon/gangster, whose son Tony (Nick Brown) is engaged to Linda (Barbara Mori), a beautiful Mexican woman. Linda just happens to be the last person J married for green-card purposes, and the only one he couldn’t forget.
As J is pulled into the gangsters’ violent world, his heart draws even closer to Linda (the language barrier provides some humour). Eventually, the pair are on the lam with vengeful Tony and his henchman in pursuit, their love growing with every dangerous curve in the road.
For those who want less, Kites: The Remix – a shorter, reworked version helmed by action specialist Brett Ratner –opens in major cities next weekend.
Toronto critics won’t get an advance screening, but clearly this marks a massive effort to create the first Bollywood crossover hit.
Unfortunately, Kites blows in too many directions.
