Kites

J’s (Hrithik Roshan), a Las Vegas based Indian dance instructor, only ambition is to become rich. He marries illegal immigrants for money and doesn’t have any qualms about faking love for Gina (Kangana Ranaut), a casino owner’s (Kabir Bedi) daughter, who falls for him. But everything flips around when he meets Natasha (Barbara Mori), Gina’s to be sister-in-law. J is hopelessly attracted to Natasha, who happens to be Linda, one of the illegal immigrants J married. J and Natasha spend the night before her marriage to Tony (Nick Brown) hanging out together. When Tony catches them in the morning and threatens to kill J, Natasha attacks him and runs off with J. They make a dash for Mexico dodging the police and Tony. As they make a final run J is hit by Tony’s bullet and Natasha leaves him. When he finally comes around three months later J starts looking for Linda.

Kites has been in the making for over two years now and it was supposed to be one of the most awaited films of 2009 but a six month delay followed and now what we have is an but what we have is one unmitigated disaster instead of the film of 2010. While watching one of Hrithik Roshan’s interviews in the lead up to the release he said that ‘every film has its own destiny’ and I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell is he trying to hint.

Hrithik Roshan’s cryptic message becomes as clear as the day once you endure Kites. It seems like Roshan Jr. woke up from the sleepwalk called Kites and started praying hard for suddenly realized what he had on his hands was perhaps the worst film of his decade long career. Well let’s not be so rash. The worst film of his career would be a close call between Yaadein, Mujhse Dosti Karoge, Na Tum Jaano Na Hum but the point one is trying to make here is that this is a man who apparently said no to Swades because the script wasn’t convincing enough. A story, no matter how rudimentary has been the mainstay of Anurag Basu and Rakesh Roshan films and Kites has no story to tell. Basu’s Gangster was a taut thriller which was very deftly crafted but here he trades all that for crazy camera angles and crazier slow motion shots.

It would be difficult to pinpoint what exactly went wrong with Kites simply because there is hardly anything that felt right about the film. A blatant rehash of Woody Allen’s Match Point, the entire first half of the film could have been summarized in a mere 15 minutes. Instead it meanders so much in the first 45 minutes that you lose all interest. For a film about the meeting of two free spirited people (why else would you think this was called Kites!?) who don’t mind tumbling the applecart while answering the call of passion there is no sense urgency in their actions. J is shown to be someone who doesn’t believe in love and all it takes to make him fall head over heels for Linda/ Natasha is one long glance in the rain. She’s passionate about him but is always in tow minds about J even while running away with him. After watching Kites I propose that there should be a fine imposed on films that use more than a handful of slow motion shots. Everything is so trying to be stylish here that everyone gets their own million slow motion walking and giving the look shots.

Hrithik Roshan’s J in Kites tries to be a larger than life presence rather than a convincing performance. Roshan has been careful enough to be a performance driven actor ever since his turnaround with Koi Mil Gaya. So much so that even stands out when he’s playing a spineless film star in Luck By Chance. What’s worse is that this is the first time he suffers the lack of a well defined role in his own production.

When the film had started some where it was meant to be a triangle but by the time it made to the screens Kangana Ranaut was relegated to three dialogues, one song and two scenes where she looks demented. The chemistry between Roshan and Mori has been the conspicuous focus of the film. But does looking at each other endlessly sum up chemistry? Every time the two come face to face, which is almost 90% of the film, everything else simply ceases to exist. To add to the torture every scene between the two seems like the same one played all over again- she talks in Spanish and he just says ‘I don’t know’. Seeing Mori and Roshan romance endlessly and yak non-sense in the name of dialogue one can’t help but wonder if there was ever a script in the first place.

Many people found the first half of Kites to be promising which isn’t totally untrue for when compared with the second half the former is a masterpiece! The entire second half operates on the a pattern of chase, talking back and forth in two languages, action set piece, more lesson in translation and this is repeated over and over again. By the end of you hate the Spanish-English chatter, you hate the rugged countryside and you hate just about everything. Kites, no pun intended is at best a phati patang!