Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.

Okay, maybe that’s not exactly what he says, but this reader definitely digs KRRISH. It sounds like something I’d have to see to believe:

Okay, since you’re running Bollywood reviews again, I’ll send you this.

Hrithik Roshan is the biggest star in Bollywood, and there are a lot of reasons why. First off, he’s amazingly good-looking, even ridiculously so, but for some reason it’s not icky. Maybe that’s because he’s also a physical athlete of the same caliber Stallone was when he made the first Rambo movie. Roshan isn’t just super-cut; he looks like he inhabits his body in a way that’s very rare. And if he’s fantastic in his action sequences(he is in spades) he’s also a terrific dancer, whose every movie is characterized by clean, crisp punctuation. But he’s also lucky enough to be the son of one of Bollywood’s top directors, Rakesh Roshan, who piloted a number of very cool and extremely crazy action flicks back in the nineties, notably Karan Arjun and Koyla, both with Shahrukh Khan. Anyway, Rakesh realized his son was excellent hero material, and decided to make a star of him, with telling effect. Their last collaboration, Koi Mil Gaya, was the biggest hit in Bollywood history; heavily influenced by Hollywood and Hong Kong flicks, it was a three-hour long SF epic that was equal parts ET, Charlie, and Shaolin Soccer. In it, Hrithik plays an err, mentally challenged fellow who gets a giant brain-boost from a little blue rubber alien named Jadoo, and also wins the girl, a scientist played by the delicious Preity Zinta; the story was all over the place, as I guess I’ve already made clear, but the scenery---the Canadian Rockies standing in as Kashmir---was fabulous, the musical numbers showed Hrithik’s dance skills off to impressive advantage, and the thing actually clicked in a weird sort of way.

Now comes a superhero sequel, called Krrish, which I saw with a crowd of Indian folks at the gorgeous Cinema Center in Newark, Delaware, and the thing was a big improvement over the first flick in every way. Yeah, the storyline is still derivative, but it’s a whole lot more focused than Koi Mil Gaya’s, and the comedy works as often as not, which is kinda rare in Bollywood flicks; moreover, Krrish features some very badass wirework from Hong Kong action genius Ching Siu Tung (Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Shaolin Soccer, Chinese Ghost Story, The Killer) who really pulls out all the stops to demonstrate the superiority of actual moving bodies to CG flying bullshit.

Plot has Hrithik as Krishna, the son of the guy he played in the last movie; dad has died under suspicious circumstances in Singapore, while working for Arya, a sinister computer tycoon played by the ever-reliable Naseeruddin Shah. Krishna has inherited his father’s alien-enhanced intelligence, and a host of physical super-powers as well; fearing that Krishna will be exploited and suffer a fate similar to her son’s, Krishna’s grandma (played by 70’s goddess Rekha, who still looks pretty good) takes the kid off to Kashmir, where he grows into a flying nature boy who communes with the animals and outruns stallions pretty convincingly. Into this situation comes hotty Pryanka Chopra, who works for a television station in Singapore; after some fairly funny stuff where Krishna passes himself off as a ghost, he and Pryanka hit it off, have a nicely photographed musical interlude, and head to Singapore, to grandma Rekha’s dismay. As it just so happens, Arya is headquartered there, and is about to complete the reconstruction of a computer designed---then destroyed---by Krishna’s dad. The damn thing was made to look into the future, you see, and poppa, upon discovering that Arya was evil incarnate, blew the machine up. But Arya wasn’t about to let that stop him, and so Krishna, after several more musical numbers, winds up using his powers to stop him, and avenge his dad, of course.

As is typical for Hindi flicks, Krrish runs pretty long, and those who can’t stand musical hijinks might want to avoid it. Even for those of us who like the musical stuff, the songs, written by Hrithik’s uncle Rajesh(who’s done better work), aren’t that great. The symphonic score is better, though, in a Hans-Zimmerish sort of way, and there are other distractions, including Ms. Chopra, who’s one of the world’s best-looking actresses, hands down. The production values are good, and the Kashmir and Singapore locations are put to excellent advantage. Moreover, even though the story slows down in the middle, ( it takes way too long for the villain to be introduced and the real plot to kick in), the last forty minutes are dynamite. As noted, Ching Siu Tung (with an assist from Shyam Kaushal) turns in some knockout work, and there are a bunch of fairly sharp twists in the story, which I won’t give away. By the time the climax starts, you really hate Naseeruddin Shah, and a genuinely hateful villain is forty percent of a good action movie. I found myself really getting involved, in a way that I rarely do with movies anymore. To put it simply, Krrish is a whole lot better than most American superhero stuff, and Hrithik Roshan deserves to be a big star over here. The man’s got megawatt star power, and he makes the guys who are passing for action leads in American films look pretty pathetic.

Zorachus