fter the success of Bahubali series, Rajamouli’s RRR is popularly streaming on Netflix. It has reached the top 10. The title stands for Roudram Ranam Rudhiram in its native Telugu, which translates to rise, roar, revolt. It centres around the real-life stories of two Indian revolutionaries in the early Twentieth Century, Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem, who contested the oppression of British colonial rule. The movie is — in the director’s words — an “imaginary friendship between two superheroes.” Although the movie’s original language is Telugu; the version shown on Netflix is dubbed in Hindi. As someone who‘s watched all the Fast and Furious movies in sequence and loved Top Gun Maverick, RRR has been on my radar for weeks.

On a trip through the Indian countryside, Catherine Buxton (Alison Doody), the autocratic wife of the British colonial governor, buys an Indian girl named Malli (Twinkle Sharma), like one purchases a pet. The governor’s party takes the child away despite her mother’s protests. Malli’s mother Loki (Ahmareen Anjum) is then assaulted by British guards. Malli belongs to the Gond tribe. The tribe’s shepherd, Bheem (NT Rama Rao Jr), a fierce warrior, heads to Delhi to find her, disguising himself as a Muslim mechanic named Akhtar. The British governor, Scott Buxton (Ray Stevenson), is notified by an Indian police officer about the shepherd and his fierceness. Buxton orders his constables to find and seize Bheem. One of the officers, Raju (Ram Charan), undertakes the mission, preparing to break into the city’s revolutionary circles. In Delhi, two Indian strangers find a boy drowning in the river and team up to rescue him; the two men, Raju and Akhtar, soon become friends. Raju is oblivious that Akhtar is the warrior he’s looking for, and Akhtar is unaware that the latter works for the man whose household he aims to attack.

The themes focus on the carnage and atrocious racism of the British governmental violence, Buxton’s tyranny, the irrational hunger for supremacy that Catherine displays, the brutal prejudices of subservient officers, and the despicable politics of employing locals to do their dirty work.

The drama of secrets and emotional horror is a lot like Hollywood blockbusters, where scenes are packed with action and shifts in characters. Although it features little dialogue and little to no historical or social context, it makes explicit statements. To call it blatant would be an understatement. Rajamouli is an artist with unique disposition and talent. His films are mostly classified as high fantasy. He highlights the legend in a scene which introduces Raju in a prison. As Indians storm the gates to free a hostage, Raju takes on the entire surging crowd by surprise with his acrobatics and martial arts skills. The fantasy elements are strengthened by Bheem’s laborious voluntary training, which involves solo battles with a wolf and a tiger. RRR also features a lot of violence: spurting blood, blazing arrows, mauling tigers and beaten bodies. This adds to the sense of hyperbole. The plot has various twists and turns, secretive byways and startling acquaintances, that have the brilliance of magic tricks.

The focus is on the carnage and atrocious racism of the British, governmental violence, Buxton’s tyranny, the irrational hunger for supremacy that Catherine displays, brutal prejudices of subservient officers, and the despicable politics of employing locals to do their dirty work. The portrayal of colonial tyranny involves not only severe economic disparity but also unyielding political suppression. This is shown through an absolute ban on Indians’ right to own firearms. Turmoil ensues when a single rifle falls into their hands.

Musically, the movie is a stunning success, with characters singing at moments of striking political import, like the time when Raju and Bheem attend a British social gathering. They convert cultural chauvinism into a remarkable performance. The choreography is competitive and fight scenes as athletic as they are dance-like. It is difficult to disregard a warrior carrying another on his back, with the one on top holding two rifles and shooting them with lethal accuracy in opposite directions while the bearer breaks through a brick wall. A fugitive motorcycle is stopped with one foot, caught midair, and tossed with shattering force. A lone blazing arrow burns the whole landscape. Rajamouli holds the record for being the only director in India to touch the Rs 1,000 crore mark twice with this film. The period action thriller, which broke many records at the Indian box office, has definitely made its presence felt on the digital screen.

The author is the publishing editor at Liberty Books.