Ra.One: Shah Rukh Khan has another winner

Shah Rukh Khan has another winner on his hands with Ra.One.

tabloid! was at the Grand Cineplex  last night to watch and review the film.

The movie started a good hour-and-a-half later than the scheduled time but the audience were willing to wait as SRK himself addressed them in each of the halls.

“I’m going to keep it short as the viewing is quite delayed. But would like to thank all my friends without whom this would not have been possible”.

Dream start

The movie begins with a funny dream sequence where the hero is going to save his girl from the evil Khalnayak (villain). Shekhar Subramaniam (Shah Rukh Khan) is a graphics specialist working for Barron Industries that makes video games and a man who loves his wife Sonia (Kareena Kapoor) and son Prateek (Armaan Verma).

Prateek however thinks his father is “not cool”, mistaking Shekhar’s sensibility for cowardice and lack of spunk. Though he believes it’s always good that wins in the end, to make Prateek happy, Shekhar decides to build a video game Random Access One aka Ra.One (a phonetic name similar to Raavan, the biggest villain in Hindu mythology) where the villain will be stronger than hero. However, just like Frankenstein, the Ra.One becomes a living source of evil who not only kills Shekhar and his colleague but wants Lucifer (Prateek’s login) who was the only one who could defeat him. And Shekhar is reborn as G.One, his digital image from the game to combat Ra.One.

Of course, like always, good reigns over evil and G.One and Prateek together beat Ra.One (reborn as Pi2) through digital warfare and intellect and instinct that artificial intelligence cannot gain.

Special effects

The movie’s special effects team has nicely packaged a typical Bollywood potboiler as a slick thriller, on the lines of Hollywood’s Matrix, X-Men and similar sci-fi films, under the supervision of Jeff Kleiser who has contributed to films such as Tron, Stargate, Judge Dredd and X-Men to name a few. Combined with crisp sound design by Slumdog Millionaire’s Oscar winning Rasool Pookutty, this kind of sci-fi thriller is new to the Indian
cinemagoer and will be highly appreciated, especially in 3D, which unfortunately we didn’t get to watch.

SRK turns screenplay writer with biographer Mushtaq Shaikh and Kanika Dhillon. The dialogue written by Dhillon and Niranjan Iyenger is punchy and funny at various times. The audience were also in splits when superstar Rajnikanth as Chitti and
Khalnayak Sanjay Dutt made their cameos on screen.

While Chhamak Chhalo Kapoor sizzled only in one scene, SRK held the film from the beginning, first as the geek then as the superhero. Little Verma was good as Prateek while Rampal always makes a good baddie.

In all, a fun movie to catch and will definitely run full house during the Diwali weekend – making it a very happy Diwali for Shah Rukh Khan.