Kites (2010)

"Kites" is a bravely attempted film well worth watching for many unique elements. The occasionally mystifying failures of "Kites" fascinate, as much as its often noteworthy achievements.I wanted to like this film ... .The casting was good and performances excellent. The endlessly gifted Hrithik Roshan is, simply, the best actor of his generation. The mature and even compelling performance he delivers here as a grey character lifts "Kites" to another level. The Mexican costar I'd never heard of before, Barbara Mori, was alright. Kangana Ranaut was even better, as the rather sweet rich girl Mr Roshan's character targets to exploit. Kabir Bedi, as the girl's father whose casino ownership covers mob activities, was very good and could usefully have been given more story in better balance with Nicholas Brown, the brother who served as chief baddie. Special recognition is due Yuri Suri (general Bairam Khan to Mr Roshan's emperor, from "Jodhaa Akbar") for an outstanding performance in a small but critical role as the mobster family's chauffeur.Unfortunately the story – and direction – fail the performances.To understand why "Kites" disappointed at the box office, look no further than the weak ending. After two hours bonding with a film's protagonists and following their troubles an audience expects and has even earned some emotional payoff at the end. Whether positive or negative, the tone of the outcome should mesh with the overall tone of the story. But "Kites" in a sense cheats its audience: its set-up does not justify this particular end.The multiplicity of languages doesn't help. Subtitled English or Hindi dialogue is one thing, but when they start throwing in Spanish, too ... the resulting babel was confusing enough even for someone like me who's used to reading subtitles. What Indian audiences, many of them native speakers of languages other than Hindi perhaps, might have made of this three-language mess I can only imagine.I am not impressed by Anurag Basu's direction. So many of this film's basic story and communication problems could have been fixed simply by unfolding the story strictly from one point-of-view: Jay Ray (Mr Roshan), the central character, so that the audience understands – and where necessary, misunderstands – everything from that one perspective. But when Mr Basu repeatedly has Jay understanding one thing and the audience, through misleading subtitles, something else altogether, the story spins out of control and loses focus.There ARE some truly brilliant moments here. The shadow puppet sequence. The yellow van scene. The champagne-on-the-rooftop 'divorce'. The whole '3 months earlier' sequence introducing Jay's life in Las Vegas – performance, editing, cinematography, musical score – is fantastically effective to establish the character and set tone and mood, climaxing in the mindblowingly powerful 'Fire' – gods, can that man dance! – which leaves the audience totally primed to follow this character anywhere. But Mr Basu's direction is not able to sustain that same energy as the story progresses.I believe Mr Basu's greatest single failure, however, is not convincing us how, why, or even if Jay and Linda love each other. This is fatal, since the whole plot turns on it. When Mr Basu leaves his audience wondering if their love is only situational (i.e., we're-in-this-together-because-people-are-trying-to-kill-us), it undercuts the whole story. Despite the director's repeated and very visual emphasis on the physical perfection of his two stars – bare chest and bikini shots abound – he does not, for instance, have them react to or even much notice each other's character's physicality. And under Mr Basu's hand the misunderstandings and miscommunications between the two central characters, even when quite remarkably funny, come through much more strongly for the audience than anything seeming to draw the purported lovers together. What kind of 'love story' is it, if an audience reasonably has cause to doubt whether the couple could be happy together even if they do get together?Still, a bold and intriguing experiment, well worth watching.In Hollywood this story might have been pitched as "Saturday Night Fever" meets "Thelma and Louise" with narrative structure from "The Hangover". And it ALMOST works.The production values – cinematography, sound, musical score, visual design – of "Kites" are uniformly excellent. The action sequences are well-mounted, even expensively mounted. The outstanding, complex, and challenging performance by Mr Roshan is almost, by itself, enough to raise the film beyond the limitations of Mr Basu's flawed direction.There are great pieces within "Kites" ... even if those pieces do not, in the end, fit together as the same puzzle.

I'm terribly disappointed by Kites. I expected to see something that is both romantic and light, but this film is awfully clichéd, heavy and melodramatic. The script is very poor and the story is generally uninspiring and at points does not even make sense. Anurag Basu's direction is inconsistent. The narrative is filled with flashbacks and some sequences are devoid of words, resulting in a very confusing development which distracts from the main proceedings. The music is good in parts. None of the songs is particularly memorable but some of them are enjoyable when played in the film. The movie does have its moments. Some action sequences are entertaining and so are some of Hrithik and Barbara's scenes together. Which brings me to the next point and it is the lead pair. Sadly, their interaction was not brought out very well. At points I wondered if there was something else to their relationship and sometimes I struggled to understand why they actually loved each other so much, and that was not clear to me from what I saw on-screen. Their relationship was poorly executed by the director. Hrithik Roshan is okay. There is something sincere about his performance but overall he is not very convincing and at points looks way too pretentious. Barbara Mori is extremely attractive but she too seems lost in this lingual mess. Kangna Ranaut is criminally wasted in a role that is clearly just a favour to the one who actually launched her career in the industry. Nicholas Brown is bad as Tony. The film's ending was supposed to be moving but instead it looked corny and stale. Kites is a one-time watch and there too it falters too many times. It sadly lacks the power to captivate and excite and is overall a forgettable film on all accounts.

i liked the movie... its a different love story from all other Bollywood movies.. cinematography is very good... stunts are decent..but a sad ending to the story.. Barbara Mori looked elegant n beautiful ... Hrithik was also good.. it is a simple love story..may be people expected a lot from the movie,thats why it became a flop.. it was a good experimental movie for the international audience and you can clearly see that it is made for international level..After watching this i understood one thing,we should not listen for critics anymore..its like this,without reading a book you will never know what is the content..so without watching a movie,don't judge it by others words..

This was a pretty cool movie, a different and unique prospect in Hindi Cinema for the first time. Maybe I'm a little biased because being Indian guy I myself really like Hispanic/Latin girls a lot.This movie leaves you in some puzzles which I guess the story writers didn't seem to give any importance to for some reason because I kept wondering whatever happened to that situation etc.. Action scenes could've been better.There were many parts that could've been better as I did not enjoy seeing Hrithik being a wimp, his comeback after what happened in the story should've been as appealing as his character in Doom 2, A Tough/Masculine risk taking thief with lots of charisma.This movie also had some similarities between the Hollywood movie "A man apart" starring Vin Diesel and offcourse the bolly movie Awarapan starring Emran Hashmi and Ashutosh Rana. After this movie ended I felt the same feeling I got after watching Awarapan.Overall I really enjoyed it. Barbra Mori was very beautiful and their Chemistry really did work. I just hope more Latin actresses get involved with Bollywood because this concept is Brilliant.So go see Kites!