Raavan

Raavan
2010
5/5 stars

Dev Pratap Sharna (played by Vikram), a ruthlessly determined police officer, is transferred to a province to capture the dangerous tribal leader/villain Beera (Abhishek Bachchan).  Beera kidnaps Dev's wife, Ragini (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan), beginning a violent and bloody fourteen day chase that ends in a showdown between the two men.

( Nikhil Dwivedi and Ravi Kishan also feature, with extended cameos by Priyamani and Govinda)

First off, let me say that a thriller of this sort is not my usual kind of movie.  I started it out of curiosity, merely wanting to see how well the married Bachchans acted together, only intending to watch a few minutes.  I finished it two hours and sixteen minutes later because they are great together (at times electric), because Abhishek is so convincing he scared the heck out of me, and because Vikram lives up to his glowing reputation.  Aishwarya is impressive in this extremely emotional role. Both the supporting cast and the cameo actors give solid, believable performances,  The camera work is stunning -- angles, colors, points-of-view -- and the entire film has a gritty, striking beauty.  The music (songs and incidental both) is often haunting and always highly effective.  As for the suspenseful story, it is chilling, well-plotted, nicely paced, and wholly engrossing.  As I said, not my typical film, but it was fully worth five stars.

(This film was shot in Hindi and Tamil simultaneously, with slightly differing casts.  My equally glowing review of the Tamil version can be found here.)