Krrish (2006) - Foreign Film Friday - Through the Eyes of Cat

By Cat

Number Rolled: N/A

Movie Name/Year: Krrish (2006)

Tagline: He was born with a gift ... he was special ... like his father.

Genre: Bollywood, Action/Adventure, Romance, Sci-Fi

Length: 154 minutes

Rating: NR

Production Companies: Film Kraft

Producer: Rakesh Roshan

Director: Rakesh Roshan

Writer: Rakesh Roshan, Robin Bhatt, Sachin Bhowmick, Honey Irani, Akarsh Khurana, Sanjay Masoom

Actors: Rekha, Hrithik Roshan, Priyanka Chopra, Sharat Saxena, Hemant Pandey, Manini M. Mishra, Naseeruddin Shah, Puneet Issar, Akash Khurana, Xia Bin, Archana Puran Singh, Kiran Juneja, Preity Zinta

Stunt Coordinators: Siu-Tung Ching, Shyam Kaushal

Blurb from Rottentomatoes: Krishna is born with magical powers -- a legacy from his father, Rohit Mehra. Priya comes into his life and becomes his world. When she beckons him to Singapore, he follows. In Singapore, Dr Siddhant Arya, the megalomaniac scientist is on the verge to change the future forever. Only one man stands between Dr Siddharth Arya and his destructive dreams. To block his ruthless ambitions, Krishna must become Krrish.

Why is this edition special, you ask? Today, I get to take you ‘off script’ so to speak. Since Foreign Film Friday was added to our format this year, there aren’t any movies for me to pick out of Selina’s archived solo reviews to give you a different perspective on. So rather than rolling, I’ve selected a movie just barely outside of our list timeframe (releases within the last decade).

I remember watching a trailer for this film around the time it was released, and how I had been so curious about it then. Then, I noticed that there was a sequel to Krrish available on Netflix that is within our list-range. Win-win! This movie looked really interesting and it gives you some groundwork frame of reference prior to the dice potentially giving us Krrish 3 (2013) at some point in the future. You might be wondering what happened to ‘Krrish 2’ – I’ll get to that here in a second.

First, I want to caution our readers to entirely ignore the blurb description in Netflix for this movie. It’s entirely wrong. This is one thing that galls me about these little summary descriptions. It’s not just Netflix that falls prey to this – it’s everywhere. I’ve experienced it with my Xfinity cable service as well. Someone either snarky or plain lazy writes whatever the hell they feel like without really getting a grasp of what the programming they’re summarizing entails. I have had to double-take before in an instance where the blurb-writer interjected their personal opinion of the production. Whether or not some bozo who thinks they’re funny likes something or not has no bearing on my desire to know what the general plot of something is as I’m scrolling through my guide. Can you tell that this is a pet peeve?

I digress…

Back to the movie! To answer the conundrum posed before, there simply is no Krrish 2. Krrish is actually considered the 2^nd movie of this franchise. It all starts with the film Koi... Mil Gaya (2003), which features the parents and grandparents of Krrish’s main character. It seems they didn’t use the ‘2’ in the title because this is an origin story for the Krrish superhero. Krrish 3 (2013) picks up at some point after the events in this movie, and there’s a Krrish 4 currently in production with a release date tentatively set for Christmas of 2018 in India.

Following Krrish, and especially around the timeframe of the 3^rd installment of this series, comic books and cartoons came out featuring this superhero. This series is considered one of the most successful Bollywood franchises of all time. I can see why – it was fantastic!

There are only 2 things that kept this from getting a 5-star rating from me. The first was those infernal subtitles. The text was in plain white and over the movie, and had a few issues here and there. The subs did follow the lyrics of the traditional Bollywood musical numbers sprinkled through the movie, though. To be honest, I got so drawn into the movie that at some point I stopped caring and wasn’t even realizing I was reading as I watched.

The second issue wasn’t really all that bad. The film is a little over 2.5 hours long. At some points it feels a little slow-moving, but it doesn’t really take away from the story. The movie needed the time it took for character development. A few minutes here or there could have been streamlined but other than that, the length was justified.

The first act of the story follows the main character, Krishna, as he grows from a boy into the strapping young man, isolated from the world. The second act comes when the outside world comes to him and he has an encounter that changes him forever – because his feelings get involved. The third act is what follows as a result, and so on. I can’t really give more detail away without spoiling things.

The cast is fabulous here. When Rakesh Roshan (King Uncle, Koyla, Karobaar: The Business of Love); whom was writer, director, producer, and actor playing Krishna’s grandfather; wrote the story for this movie, he must have had his son in mind for the lead. It suited Hrithik Roshan (Lakshyta, Kites, Mohenjo Daro) perfectly. This guy has some serious action skills. You read that right – the lead in this film is Rakesh Roshan’s son. (The musical composer Rajesh Roshan (Love at Times Square, Aetbaar, Valley of Flowers), is also Rakesh’s brother!)

Hrithik had his work cut out for him in preparation for this movie. He had martial arts skills to execute (impressively, I might add), and TONS of wire-work. In fact, there was a freak accident involving snapped cables while filming in Singapore that was a near-miss to catastrophe. Hrithik makes this stuff look easy – and he looks good doing it, too.

This movie has all the classic Bollywood elements – humor, drama, romance, a twist, group dance numbers, fantastic visuals and costuming. There’s breathtaking scenery, and interesting cinematography. I loved the action special effects. It reminded me in some places of watching anime where the background blurs behind the character to highlight whatever power move is happening. In some places it almost felt like a comic brought to life – done the right way. Then, of course, there’s a sci-fi element woven in. Since I was unfamiliar with the first movie, it came at me out of nowhere; so I won’t spoil it for you!

All told, the movie was engaging and full of heart. It’s a must-see for anyone that loves superhero origins and musicals Bollywood-style. This film, in fact, would be great for anyone looking to test the waters with the genre.

Languages

Speech Available: Hindi

Subtitles Available: English

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – 100%

Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score – 72%

Metascore - 68/100

Metacritic User Score –6.5/10

IMDB Score – 6.3/10

Trust the Dice: Cat’s Rating – 4.5/5

Trust-the-Dice’s Parental Advisory Rating: PG

Movie Trailer: 

Bonus! - If you don't mind mild spoilers, there's a 6-minute behind-the-scenes video available here. There's interview content, a look at the martial arts training Hrithik Roshan underwent, and production footage. 

1000 Rupee Note (2014) - Foreign Film Friday

Number Rolled: 77

Movie Name/Year: 1000 Rupee Note (2014)

Tagline: None

Genre: Drama

Length: 89 minutes

Rating: NR

Production Companies: Infinitum Productions

Producer: Ranjit Gugle, Shekhar Sathe, Shrihari Sathe

Director: Shrihari Sathe

Writer: Shrikant Bojewar

Actors: Devendra Gaikwad, Usha Naik, Pooja Nayak, Sandeep Pathak, Shekhar Sathe, Ganesh Yadav, Shrikant Yadav

Stunt Doubles: N/A

Languages

Speech Available: Marathi

Subtitles Available: English, Traditional Chinese, French, German, Spanish

Blurb from Netflix: After randomly receiving a handsome political bribe, a sweet, poor elderly woman decides to treat herself a shopping spree, which doesn’t go smoothly.

Selina’s Point of View:

Straight drama isn’t my thing, but I can still appreciate it when it comes in the form of a great film. And 1000 Rupee Note is a GREAT film.

There were some cultural references that went right over my head, but that’s bound to happen. Not just because we haven’t been doing Foreign Film Fridays for very long, but because this was a very unique film for Netflix in general. This was the only Marathi language film I saw available. I have no idea how that particular Indian culture differs from the others. I imagine it’s similar to the U.S., where there is a huge cultural difference between the country, the suburbs, and the cities.

Despite a few names that just didn’t ring any bells at all, I still found it easy to disappear into Budhi’s tragic story. 1000 Rupee Note was a tale about human kindness, corruption, and greed. The plot went down roads I’m certain an American film wouldn’t have taken and told the plot in such a way that it spoke to many emotions all at one.

Usha Naik (Half Ticket, Jai Mohata Devi, Lapachhapi) was a phenomenal choice for the lead character, Budhi. She played her character so well that I couldn’t look away from the screen for more than a few seconds at a time. That’s impressive because this is the kind of film I would normally consider slow and boring – but it absolutely was neither of those things.

Budhi’s story was a strong and highly realistic one. Chinmay Kelkar (Timepass 2, Let the Wind Blow, And Gandhi Goes Missing…), the person in charge of casting, could have easily given the part to someone that tried to take it in a more surreal direction – which would have ruined everything. Naik 100% makes 1000 Rupee Note what it is.

Because I’m not a drama fan, I likely won’t be watching this film again – but that’s my own personal choice. I would highly recommend it to anyone that does enjoy the genre.

Cat’s Point of View:

I dove straight in on this one. I didn’t read the blurb or look for trailers. I worried a little in the beginning of the movie that I was going to be as bored as I was for that first foreign film we watched.

That quickly changed.

Do I think this is something to go screaming from the rooftops about? Ehh, not so much. What I do think is that this was a pretty solid movie. I connected with the main characters and I empathized with them.

I think I would have gotten a little more out of the movie had I been able to tie the musical selections in. Since they weren’t something I could easily recognize (such as the cover songs from that prior film we watched), and there were no subtitles for the lyrics; it was little more than ambient sound as part of the setting backdrop.

My curiosity is piqued by the music mostly because I recognize that there is much significance in every gesture and motion in Indian dance – such as seen in the Bollywood movies. It tells a story as much as the dialogue and other physical acting.

There was a lot of bleakness; but at the same time, the film was full of heart. It was a well told tale of how money can cause as many problems as it solves. I may not feel the need to watch this one again, but at least I do not feel that my time was wasted.

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – 80%

Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score – None

Netflix’s Prediction for Selina – 3/5

Selina’s Trust-the-Dice Score – 5/5

Netflix’s Prediction for Cat – 3/5

Cat’s Trust-the-Dice Score – 3/5

The Random Rating: PG-13 (Keep in mind that this goes by the United States MPAA guidelines. Due to a difference in culture between the U.S. and India, we can't guarantee this meets Indian rating standards.)

Movie Trailer: