RRR – Film Review

Published June 6, 2022

Movie Details

Rating
B
Director
S. S. Rajamouli
Writer
S. S. Rajamouli
Actors
N.T. Rama Rao Jr., Ram Charan, Alia Bhatt, Ajay Devgn, Ray Stevenson
Runtime
3 h 07 min
Release Date
March 24, 2022
Genres
Action, Drama
Certification
R
A tale of two legendary revolutionaries and their journey far away from home. After their journey they return home to start fighting back against British colonialists in the 1920s.

For whatever reason, I never find myself watching movies such as RRR. I always tend to watch the massive movies that are on everyone’s radar or independent art-house-style movies, but after hearing a ton of praise for RRR, I knew that I had to see what all the hype was about. After watching the film, I can certainly tell you that director S. S. Rajamouli had some humongous ideas for this story, but sadly, not all of them work.

RRR is way too long for starters. It’s three hours and five minutes long, and yet by the time the film was over, I felt as if I had just watched an entire season of a television series. The film is a lot to take in, and not all of it is needed. In fact, there were several scenes in the film that could have easily been removed and it wouldn’t have affected the overall story whatsoever. The pacing here is extremely slow, and many scenes drag on for way longer than they need to.

And for some reason, there are a handful of strange dance/musical numbers injected into this film that feel totally out of place seeing as how this is, at its core, an action movie. That’s why it’s genuinely confusing why, in one scene, we will see a man wrestling with a tiger, and then in the next, see a group of people having a blast, dancing their worries away on the streets. Is it entertaining to watch? Absolutely. But that doesn’t mean it makes sense for this kind of story.

But that’s not to say RRR is a bad movie because it’s really not. The overall story is quite good, and by the time the film ends, you’ll definitely be moved and that’s mainly because of the relationship between the two brotherly leads. They are incredibly charismatic and so much fun to watch. They’re also just so charming to watch. It’s quite easy to be swept away into the characters alone, even if the story as a whole feels painfully slow.

Also, whenever there is an action scene, boy is it ever crazy. Seriously. The choreography here is truly top-of-the-line and sometimes utterly jaw-dropping. To be completely honest with you, RRR is one of the most chaotic movies I have seen in my entire life. So many things happen in this movie that you’d have to watch it several times in order to fully describe everything that happens in it.

The problem, though, is that the film is not entertaining enough to warrant a rewatch. This movie should have been two hours and that’s it. The three-hour length is way too much to take, especially for this kind of story. The movie never once feels like it needs to be as long as it is. RRR is a wildly entertaining film with great leads and excellent action, but it sadly suffers from a bloated length and a story that never gets too engaging.