Kites: Movie Analysis

Let's get this right - Kites is no masterpiece. Rakesh Roshan coming up with a history dating back to the Kati Patang era. Romance is brewing amongst Bollywood clichés in which the heroine calls the hero to dance in the rain while your inhibitions behind, or the hero lends his coat to heroin when she is drenched. These properties are conventional, and the case is predictable. What still keeps you connected Kites is Anurag Basu's sublime direction in which he binds you emotionally with the naked intensity of this heartbreaking love story.

Jai (Hrithik Roshan) earn her living in LA by taking Salsa classes, and do not mind a little extra excitement by crooked means. Luck comes and knocks on the door when one of his students Gina (Kangana Ranaut) falls in love with him, and he learns that she is the daughter of a millionaire, Bob (Kabir Bedi). His pretentious affair with Gina introduces him to Natassha (Barbara Mori) held at Gina's brother Tony (Nicholas Brown).

Jai and Natassha hit it off immediately and find true love in life, much to their changing relationships. Along escape invite fear of Tony who wants to get them at any price.

Woody Allen's Match Point is the obvious reference point for the core correlation of the film. But come to think of it, thematically Kites are not very different from Rakesh Roshan's decades old flick Koyla where Shah Rukh Khan elopes with fiancé (Madhuri Dixit) of antagonist (Amrish Puri) who is out to get them. The writers Robin Bhatt and Akasha Khurana seems to draw Deepak Tijori character from their first screenplay Aashiqui the friend character (Anand Tiwari) here to help them escape.

But director Anurag Basu scores of call sparkling chemistry between the lead pair Hrithik Roshan and Barbara Mori to go to each other naturally. Despite knowledge of each others language, they communicate through symbols and connect via instant monosyllables, which states that love has no language. While fresh Barbara's face is well drained, while there is also a desi bar for her appearance when she wins a familiar stamp of approval. She seems sweet, but speaks in broken English and radiates a suggestive smile that lights up even the most mechanical stage. In tangible passion between Hrithik and Barbara when they come close for the first time almost a reconstruction of a scene from Anurag Basu's Life in a Metro where prohibited lovers Shilpa Shetty and Shiny Ahuja shared moments of intimacy. The last image in the film is visible from James Cameron's Titanic, and then you realize that the two films also share similar character conflict - the hero wins the villain's fiancée.