This summer, MovieJawn is counting down our 25 favorite action movies of all time! We will be posting a new entry each day! See the whole list so far here.

by Jo Rempel, Staff Writer

RRR stands for “Rise, Roar, Revolt,” though S. S. Rajamouli’s alliterative epic should remain an initialization. The letters could stand for anything. Indeed, RRR only means “Rise, Roar, Revolt” within Hindi- and English-speaking markets. If you speak  Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, or Malayalam—the former being the film’s native market—the three “R”s  will roughly translate to “Rage, War, Blood”. But what RRR really stands for is the trifecta at its head: director Rajamouli, as well as stars NT Rama Rao, Jr. and Ram Charan. On the one hand, three letters promise unbridled action; on the other, a monogram denoting a union between India’s most profitable director and two dynasty stars. 

RRR effortly mixes marketing and mythmaking with pure bombast, delivering refined spectacle over its three-hour runtime. Small moments between the two stars will have massive payoff by the end: Rao’s Bheem carrying Ram’s Raju on his shoulders as carefree friends leads to the two doing the same in the final battle against the English military, with Raju now dual-wielding rifles. Even a diversion into light rom-com between Bheem and an English aristocrat named Jenny leads us to “Naatu Naatu”, a song-and-dance fuck you to colonial snobbery. What starts with the pair showing off their “tangy” transforms the ball into an endurance dance-off—naturally, the affair ends up as a duel between Bheem and Raju. So much of RRR is devoted to establishing the massive political and emotional stakes, and its heroes’ shadows grow in tandem. It’s simple, really: these two are the best at everything. 

Both Komaram Bheem and Alluri Sitaram Raju were real colonial-era revolutionaries, though that might not matter. Rajamouli was inspired by the Inglorious Basterds’ alternate history and describes the two figures as “superheroes”, which to an unknowing audience they may as well be. RRR was an unprecedented crossover hit in English-speaking markets, even making its way to the awards season, claiming “Naatu Naatu” as a first original song Oscar win for the entire continent of Asia. I’m writing as one of the many people who took it as an accessible entry into India’s blockbuster landscape. The historical setting is prime real estate for cinema’s potential for nation-building, bridging the modern with the mythic—in this case, cinematic legends fold into figures of recent history who fold into the Hindu epics of Rajamouli’s childhood. As Ritesh Babu writes, “it may not be a capital H hindutva [Hindu nationalist] film, but it is a film that is very much an upper-caste Hindu lens projection and fantasy of the past.” Those among RRR’s crossover audience have the privilege of ignoring the film’s political circumstances just as Rajamouli has the privilege of presenting himself as an apolitical director, and we’ll still be left with a gonzo blockbuster with a political stance: one against the British empire. Even other colonizers hate the British; it’s a message with universal appeal.

I don’t necessarily want to be a wet blanket as to whether you should enjoy RRR. I enjoy it quite a lot in fact, but what I do think is that its story can’t be appreciated as something separate from its politics. Even divorced from the specifics of hinduvta, this is a film about two Great Men of history who are innately superior to the people who they represent. Bheem in particular is introduced as an Übermensch-like figure, described to the governor’s office as a vengeful shepherd overseeing his sheep, the  otherwise passive Gond tribesmen. By the film’s end, Raju will be draped in symbolism as the embodiment of Rama, one of the incarnations of Vishnu. The magnitude of these men’s importance drives the story forward: both their plans have to be carried out while disguised, and so there is tension not just their potential success or failure, but in our and their discovering each other’s true natures as well. 

There’s a Greek chorus running throughout the film, an actual thundering choir commenting on the sheer symbolic gravity of Bheem and Raju coming together: friendship between a tiger and a hunter, between fire and water, between free will and destiny—before the national myth there’s the creation myth, nature arising as an eruption. In the midpoint climax, Bheem storms the governor’s mansion and unleashes an entire zoo’s worth of animals on officials, judo-throwing a tiger mid-leap onto a soldier. He is destiny; he is water, filling the empty space without hesitation. Raju had promised his village that he would only return when he had put a rifle in everybody’s hand. According to the Governess’s caprice, whoever captures Bheem alive will be granted the rank of special officer, and thus have supervision over weapon shipments. Raju is the fire smoldering and fed steadily over years; he leaps in, torches in hand. In this case the meaning of free will is the ability to suppress one’s own true nature. And even as RRR has built itself to this mythopoetic level, it’s able to indulge in a frantic, semi-documentary violence, the camera prioritizing weight over scale during these setpieces. 

Okay—can I tell you my favourite moment in RRR? It’s in the second half: Raju has been arrested after trying to sabotage Bheem’s execution; Bheem escapes but now Raju is alone in jail. The governor’s men delight in feeding him only once a week, just enough to keep him alive before execution day. The governor comes to visit to see him on his knees—but now we see him from behind, doing chin-ups in his cell. Still, the governor mocks him as a failure. Raju replies: “You have every right to work but not to expect the result. Let not the result be your motive, nor your attachment be to inaction. I don’t care about the result. I will be moving towards my goal until my last breath.” He points at his nemesis and recites how his father taught him to fire a rifle: “Load, aim, shoot!” Naturally, the governor has him beat and thrown into solitary confinement. The cell is buried underground: Raju’s legs fracture from the fall. But here he is, moments later, lifting himself again. This small scene encapsulates RRR’s ridiculous energy just as much as its full-on action scenes—the image of one man getting jacked no matter the circumstances. Raju was honed into the shape of a great man since childhood—we see him at around ten, killing dozens of British soldiers—and yet the greatness is itself in the honing. Once the goal has been achieved, it’s all a bit saccharine, even at the climax itself, when the choir declares Ram to be a god at full strength. Bit RRR is at its best when it keeps pushing itself to the limit, when the meaning of the letters feels rough and unfilled.