Ra.One Movie Review

Behind the Movie Ra.One: Though a bit late, here comes most hyped and highest budgeted movie ever seen on Indian screen. With Shah Rukh Khan and Kareena Kapoor paired together in this sci-fi entertainer, let us see how far director Anubhav Sinha justified the excitement?

In The Movie Ra.One: Sekhar Subramaniam (Shah Rukh Khan) is a computer game designer with dippy and timid attitude living with his wife Sonia (Kareena Kapoor) and son Prateik (Arman Varma). Like dad, here is son Prateik who loves to live in his own world of video games unable to connect with negative (no super hero) qualities in his dad. On the idea of Prateik, here is Sekhar develops a video game exclusively for his son with a strong, invincible villain Ra.One (Random Access Version 1) and a less powerful G.One (Good One) to combat.

Not fully convinced by his dad’s abilities, Prateik successfully beats Ra.One with the handle name of Lucifer in first two levels but leaves the game in middle in spite of warning from Ra.One. Due to some unknown technical variables, Ra.One gets out from video game entering into real life to take revenge by killing Lucifer who is none other than Prateik by taking a physical human shape of model (Arjun Rampal). Now, duty of G.One who has the shape of Sekhar (Shah Rukh) is to save both Prateik and Sonia while Sekhar is already dead. How astounding is this video game turned real life game will be, forms the rest.

Values of the Movie Ra.One: The concept of virtual Video Game characters entering into Real World is completely novel in fiction based stories. The way director Anubhav Sinha handled the theme is also interesting but weak screenplay and spineless narration made Ra.One look feeble. Cinematography of Nicola Pecorini and V. Manikandan is above the top notch while editing by Sanjay Sharma and Martin Walsh could have been still better. More than all, the budget allocated by Gauri Khan is well utilized in coming up with animated action scenes which are equal or above international standards as per the norms of Super Hero movies. Music by Vishal – Sekhar is more seen in Chammak Challo and rest is just average. 

Performance wise, regular mannerisms one would expect from Shah Rukh Khan are absolutely absent. This is more of muscle show. His performance even as an Aravam man is inconsistent with the typical Tamil slang missing many times. While Kareena has less to perform, young boy Arman Varma is the best asset of Ra.One. Though Arjun Rampal enters a bit late, he proved as best among contemporary artists. The little cameos by Rajinikanth, Sanjay Dutt and Priyankaa Chopra are also not that effective. 

Out of the Movie Ra.One: Although concept of Super Hero is worth a commercial one but blending it with Bollywood ishtyle is the major problem here. The element of son-father emotion hasn’t worked out properly or mission of G.One do not have any clarity. Anubhav Sinha’s expertise in dealing with VFX and final glossy output is commendable while the mediocre demonstration of feelings did not keep audience glued to screen for a long time.

One can be taken over by visual grandeur for an hour or more but for entire length when logic gets missing at core issues, result will be something like Ra.One. Film scores high points in thrilling scenes of car chase across London, the debut fight between Ra.One and G.One. Basically, director’s illusion of taking it for granted of Ra.One as a film for kids seems to have done the damage. 

Definitely Ra.One lifted the standards of Indian film making to International levels and is a conditional development over superb direction from Shankar’s Robot. On the whole, film like Ra.One will have equal number of advantages and disadvantages to work out the magic at BO.     

Cinejosh Verdict of the Movie Ra.One: Watch it once at least for the Grandeur.

                                                                                          Reviewed by Srivaas