Kites

**Kites (2010)** is a 2010 Indian romantic action film directed by Anurag Basu and produced by Rakesh Roshan. **Cast** - **Hrithik Roshan** as Jay Ray - **Bárbara Mori** as Natasha / Gina's sister / Maria - **Kangana Ranaut** as Gina Grover - **Kabir Bedi** as Bob Grover **Review by Dr Usman Latif Khawaja** **Damned Dumb Dykes** In 70s Samanta style, a masterly movie that alluded to the Indian allegory of a kite being an illusion in time, which now is a genuine classic. In 2010, we are faced with a horror road rom-com which goes all the way on the American freeways from Las Vegas to Los Angeles and then back into Mexico, in the premise of promoting love across borders and demolishing barricades across cross-cultural biases. In doing so, it manages to crash multitudes of vehicles in clumsy car chases, courtesy of Hollywood thrillers like *Ronin* and *Bullitt*, and simultaneously crashes all sound barriers with its sycophantic and grotesque background score that grates as harshly as the Nevada sun. Meanwhile, the non-existent plot involves a dance instructor called 'J' \[Hrithik Roshan\], who is a vibrant, extremely vivacious Indian living as a streetwise con man in Las Vegas, who deals in everything from gyrating on dance floors in obsequiously vulgar dance pieces styled from the best of Hema Malini and Vyjayanthimala 'snake dances', as he has run out of all his previous tricks to plagiarise Govinda and Mithun Chakraborty. He is stalked by a ravenous nymphomaniac, played by the lady Kangana, who here is cast as the vamp, while her brother is the villain and their dad \[Kabir Bedi\] is the corny mafia chief who runs the state of Nevada. Meanwhile, a Mexican illegal immigrant is smuggled in, and as she is the most beautiful woman to tread the casinos in Vegas ever since Elizabeth Taylor, everyone from Roshan to the brother of the vamp are enamoured of her. Of course, Mori falls for Hrithik Roshan, and as this is discovered, they are marked for deletion. The two make an escape, struck by the lightning bolt of love, and the whole American-Mexican mafia chases the two lucky lovers, who obviously escape every weapon from a handgun to a bazooka, while everybody else in sight is blasted into smithereens, very similar to our senses, including the audio-visual and the sixth sense. I will suffice to say that every 'genre' is stolen, rigged and tried by the director to make the kite fly, but it does not even budge, as the strings are so entangled in banal stereotypes and plagiarised from every classic Bollywood and Hollywood has made, from 'Buster Keaton' to 'James Cameron'. Basu has two distinctly varied and acclaimed movies in his kit—namely *Murder* and *Metro*—and why he took this kitchen sink on board is a paradox, as the storyline is a slander and the casting even worse, as Roshan can neither act nor dance, which is surprising, since the *Dhoom 2* title dance was much better executed by the choreographer. Mori and Roshan have atrocious accents, and they mouth the most vile dialogues written in recent times, which ranges from Spanish to English to Hindi to Urdu, as the essential Muslim Samaritan crops up in the middle of Mexico to help the divine lovers. He is called Jamal Bhai and is quickly despatched with the obligatory holy Muslim dialogues. Mori is neither photogenic nor an actress and is a total loss, while Kangana is totally wasted in a charade, darting dragon eyes and dreadful dialogues. The rest of the cast is who is who, with Kabir Bedi as the acrimonious mafia baron, who seems to be rather fed up with fathering two feckless, ferociously evil kids, while all the white Americans are there to be shot at in a turkey shoot. I am amazed that the cinematographer was actually taking this seriously while shooting this horrendous mess with a finger in every pot. But then, if you are trying to make a dyke into a kite, then you cannot be blamed for being dumb, and the only denizen here is Las Vegas, as everyone else is an alien, and that explains the disaster. As to how and why they all got there, you do not want to go there, but the director forces you into the most irritable and lamentable flashbacks to that fracas, which almost forces you into a sonorous Mexican siesta, and that is the only quality of this ground-breaking epic love story that transcends all your senses and still keeps from ascending an inch into the sky as a kite. **Rating: 1/10**