Ra One – Random Access Version 1.0

Anubhav Sinha has once again proven that his name deserves to be on a Gold Plate in the Bollywood Hall of Fame, and should go down as one of the great film makers in history, atleast Bollywood’s history. Though he does not contribute as much as others, when he does, he usually makes a good impact.

And that is what can be said about his latest masterpiece “Ra.One”, which has proven that he never stops upping the ante for Bollywood films. 

Ra One comes as the much needed change in Indian Cinema, since, well let’s face it, there are not so many hits coming out of that industry. Not so many that will draw people who don’t often watch Indian/Bollywood films, to go out and see one of them.

So what is this Ra One I speak of? Glad you asked. I went to see the movie today and here’s the how it all went down.

Pre – “Ra.One”

I came to know about this movie a while ago. I don’t recall where and how in particular, but hey, I live in a town with the largest concentration of Indian nationals outside of India, you’d think I would hear about it.

I am also friends with a Shahrukh Khan-ophile, Shanie, who, interestingly enough, is the whole reason for me to go see this movie in the first place.

Release

Ra.One was released on Diwali, October 26th, 2011. A visit to the movie theatre last weekend, noted a huge amount of patrons going to see it. Up to this point, I was not interested in seeing it. Shanie, however, was dying to see it. I could understand her anxiety, since I grew up in a house with another Shahrukh Khan-ophile. Enough said.

 

Poster

 

 

Trailer

The Ra.One trailer, that was annoyingly placed as a Youtube ad, for Bollywood & Chutney songs was not too impressive or compulsive enough to me, that I should go see the movie.

 

Should I see it?

Like I said, my interest in watching this movie was non-existent. This was mainly because I don’t really watch, and haven’t watched a Bollywood movie in a while (A few years). With the ever growing number of things that I need to do, watching movies/tv-series has become less and less important to me. Though I do watch a few whenever I do find the time.

Shanie said she was going to see it, and was indeed very excited to see it. What else could you expect? I commented on her post about her excitement that she should review the movie on her blog, and she said she would. So said, so done, Shanie posted a review. 

I know I may have to edit this paragraph out later, but Shanie’s review of the movie didn’t get me pumped to see it still. It sounded like a breathless blurt of excitement from a die hard fan. She gave her thoughts about it, they were well expressed, though, if you have no seen this movie yet, would not compel you to do so. So at this point, still not interested.

Interest started

Last Sunday, when I accompanied two friends to the Flea Market. While browsing, one of them pointed out to me that the movie was available on DVD. Well, what I would call an “unofficial” DVD copy. After they wandered off, I decided to pick up a copy, just to see it. I knew that at some point I wouldn’t hear the end of it from Shanie until I have seen this movie, so I thought, what the heck, just get it, atleast you will watch it at some point.

I told Shanie I got a copy of the movie, and she suggested that bootleg would not do justice to the movie. She also mentioned that I should see it, since “I will be in Programmers Heaven”. Now this changed my thoughts about the movie. Why would she say that? This got me interested to find out more about this movie. What is it in there about programming? I was aware up to this point that the movie was supposed to be a Science Fiction episode, but knowing how unrealistic Bollywood films can get at times, one would just rule out the thought of watching it. So I thought that I would watch it on bootleg over the weekend, and if it was any good, I’d go watch it again on the big screen.

The weekend came, and I put it now on my list of things to do. I wanted to see Ra.One, but as you would think, the bootleg would not read. It read on my computer earlier in the week, when I didn’t want it to, but it wouldn’t now. No matter what I did I couldn’t get it to work.

So now I am left with two options:

• Give up or,
• Go see it on the big screen.

I know I wasn’t going to hear the end of it from Shanie, so I decided to go with the latter as my plan. Find the time on my schedule, fitted it in, and off to the theatres to see Ra.One.

Pre-Movie

Luckily I got the bus as soon as I left home, that goes directly to the movie theatre. It sort screwed up my initial plan, but I am nothing, if not adaptable. Arrived at 2.30pm and found out that the next show was starting at 3.35pm. Stood in line to get tickets, and still debating if I should really get tickets to see this movie. Why not go see the new Harold & Kumar movie? Or something else? Nevertheless, I decided, got tickets, and hoped for better or worse.

Oddly, I thought since it wasn’t opening week, that there wasn’t going to be a large audience to see today’s showing, and not much people were in line to get tickets to that, so I thought ah, it’s going to be an almost empty seating. So I sat outside, since there was about 1hr left before the movie starts, just chilling. Went inside about 15 minutes before the movie started, and boy was I wrong about my crowd anticipation. The theatre was almost packed, with my favourite spot, last row centre, already occupied. As a matter of fact the entire middle section was already filled, so I had to find comfort in the right or left block. I quickly found a spot that was amicable and settled. So here I was, sitting in a theatre, about to watch a Bollywood film. Oh did I mention that it was in 3D, yes, the movie was in 3D. So I was pretty excited to see that.

Of course, the movie doesn’t start right away, there’s always the trailers of what exciting is upcoming to see. I usually take my pick of the next movie I will watch and try to remember the date of it’s release.

Don 2

The first trailer was Don 2, the sequel to Don (2006), which stars Shahrukh Khan also. I guess, by now, it’s conclusive to say that this is a movie I will be seeing, but I will tell you, it’s not for the reason you are thinking, it’s because it looks to be an exciting movie. Now, I have never seen the first part of this movie, but it’s surely something that I will have to do before December 23rd, when the new instalment will be released.

The other, Desi Boys, doesn’t look as exciting. It a movie about two Indian Guys who loses their jobs, and decided to become escorts. Rockstar, seems like an interesting love story about the making of a musician, but again, not worthy enough that would compel me to watch it.

The Main Feature

I know you are thinking, enough jibber jabber about nothing and get to the point already. Ok, so here goes, the main event, Ra.One.

So Ra.One, simply put, is Bollywood’s idea of the Matrix, only better. The movie is a 2011 Science Fiction thriller, that highlights areas of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It does not bring too much new ideas, in terms of AI movies, to the screen, but it does reuse/borrow from many other ideas and compose them in a interesting way.

Alert: If you haven’t seen the movie yet, and don’t want it to be spoiled for you, then you should probably stop reading from here onwards.

The movie is about Shekhar Subramanium, [Shahrukh Khan] (yes, the great King Khan himself), a south Indian Tamil speaker, who live in London with his wife, Sonia [Kareena Kapoor] and their son, Prateek [Armaan Verma].

Shekhar is a Game Developer working for Barron Industries. The company has just been at the brink of discovering systems that bridges the Virtual World and the Real World, by using the “rays and signals” that are ever present in the virtual world, and create a presence within the real world, one in which the person experiencing it, can feel as if it were tangible.

The movie opens with Jenny Nayar [Shahana Goswami], an employee of Barron, and a programmer alike, displays the results of their work, by bringing their boss into the presence of a crowd that he could not have attended. The audience was able to touch and feel the presence of her boss.

My first thought here, was, oh cool, it’s kind of like Cisco Telepresence. What’s even more cool was that Telepresence was used to create a holographic presence of humans in G.I.Joe, but this application has taken it to a whole new level. AI thoughts, hmm, I think I have already found my $14 for ticket/popcorn well spent.

The introductory scene, was epic and comical. The movie started by an episode of SRK, a villain by the name of “Lucifer” who fights “Khalnayak” [Sanjay Dutt] in order to save “Desi Girl” [Priyanka Chopra]. Now if you are a fan of Indian cinema, you would see or could tell already why this is a comic relief scene.

Priyanka Chopra, ahhhh!!, money worth spent.

This scene, was a dream by Prateek, who has a fascination for villians and evil. Shekhar, on the other hand, is a ordinary person, much like a regular geek, drive a Volkswagen, similar to the ones that Best Buy Geek Squad has. More importantly, he sucks at driving.

Shekhar and his son are worlds apart. Prateek is very disappointed in his dad, due to his goofiness. Shekhar tries desperately to be a “hero” to his son, by even attempting to dress up like Michael Jackson, a favorite of his son. Sonia, an aspiring writer, loves her husband and son to bits. She is the more calm personality, that portrays being the perfect wife.

Barron Industries got contracted to build a game, of which Shekhar is being put in charge of building. He gets an idea from his Prateek, that he should build a game in which the villain doesn’t lose and is hard to defeat. Shekhar’s own belief is in the triumph of good over evil,

Shekhar and his team builds a game, with two characters. Random Access Version One, codename, Ra. One and synonymous to Ravan, which represents a character of Evil from the Bhavagad Gita, and a counteract protagonist, the Good One, code name G.One, and synonymous to Jeevan, which means life in Hindi.

The game turns out to be a delight, and promised to bring a huge profit to Barron Industries. They were very excited to launch it, and as usual, with every launching comes a celebration or an After Party. So there was an after party that went down like this;

 

[Song is only available in preview/promo as the movie is still new]

At this point, I was analysing the need for a song, if any at all in a movie like this.  But then I concededed with myself, that I will let Bollywood be Bollywood, and do what they do best, song and dance.

I must also note that I am a music fanactic, so I know quite a bit about it, and I can tell u within 20 seconds of listening to a song, whether it’s worth it or not, and believe me, this song got me. I was like, oh, wait a minute, this was the song that Shanie was going nuts over, I like it. So much, that i comtemplated jumping up and start dancing at one point.

The song was done by Akon, American R&B Superstar, sounded like a blast. The dance was particularly exciting, and it was amazing to see the fusion of “American” culture in Indian cinema. Even the music has techno beats which is impressive. Later, I found out that the dance moves were actually adapted from Dancehall/Reggae Genre or Jamaican Dance Styles.