Quotes of the Day

For the lovers of Indian films at home and around the world — and they number in the hundreds of millions — the coming of Raavan held the promise of celebration: Holi and Diwali in one blast of musical drama. Its creator, Mani Ratnam, is the subcontinent's premier writer-director (his 1987 Nayakan made TIME's list of the 100 best movies of all time), though he usually works in his home town of Madras, and in the Tamil language, not in Hindi Mumbai, a.k.a. Bollywood. The movie's stars, Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai, are Indian cinema's golden couple: he the son of superstar Amitabh Bachchan, she the former Miss World (and TIME Asia cover girl) who made her film debut in Ratnam's Iruvar in 1997. The music director is A.R. Rahman, a Ratnam discovery whose infectious melodies in more than 100 films have made him, by some accounts, the world's best-selling recording artist. Last year Rahman won two Oscars for his Slumdog Millionaire score.

In 2007 this eminent quartet collaborated on the popular, well-received Guru, a fictionalized biopic of the Indian plutocrat Dhirubhai Ambani. (Abhishek and Aishwarya, known everywhere as Abhi and Ash, fell in love on the set and were married shortly after the opening.) The new film would be a modern retelling of The Ramayana, the beloved Sanskrit epic about the kidnapping of Sita, wife of the monarch Rama, by the demon king Ravana; Bachchan would play the kidnapper, Rai the abductee and the Tamil star Vikram her husband. Filmed in three versions — Hindi (as Raavan), Tamil (as Raavanan) and Telegu (as Villain) — and released last weekend on 2,200 screens around the world, including 109 in the U.S., the picture had all the makings of a critical success and international hit.

Except it wasn't. The local reviews ranged from disappointed to scathing (though the few American critics were more indulgent). The film's global weekend take, of Rs 52 crores, or about $11.6 million, fell far below that of the recent Indian hits 3 Idiots, My Name Is Khan and Kites. Film fans were soon jamming the Internet to express derision toward Raavan and complain about Bachchan's outsize acting style. So noisome was the tumult that on Sunday, Papa Amitabh took to Twitter to blame his son's character's "erratic behaviour" on the director's vigorous editing style: "Lot of merited film edited out, causing inconsistent performance and narrative." Ratnam tweeted back, "Amitji should have conveyed me whatever he wanted to say, he has my cell no." One of India's all-time top film stars and its greatest living auteur were dissing each other like sophomore cheerleaders in a Facebook snit.

So, you ask, how is the movie? Well, Raavan — the Hindi version, being shown in the U.S. — is better than you'd be led to think by all the outrage; it's just not up to the director's high standard. It begins with a vibrant chaos of images, as Rahman's ultra-catchy tune "Beera Beera" (listen to it on YouTube) accentuates the propulsive pace. The movie boasts some impressive stunt work, as the stars or their stunt doubles slide down rock faces, drop through tree branches and navigate a giant waterfall. The best action scene takes place on a rickety footbridge with the purported hero dangling over a ravine, his life literally in the hand of the purported villain. At the end, the film ventures into the territory of ethical ambiguity. But in between are wastes of creaky incident without much enriching of character or plot. And the central performance by Bachchan is either a bold stab at thespic immortality or an essay in grotesque derangement. Maybe both.

A region troubled by insurgency gets a new chief inspector: Dev (Vikram), accompanied by his faithful wife Ragini (Rai). In short order, Ragini is kidnapped by the legendary rebel Beera (Bachchan) and held for 14 days — as opposed to the 14 years of the queen's captivity in The Ramayana — while she juggles her hatred for Beera with a growing sympathy. In a flashback, we learn that Beera has abducted Ragini in retaliation for the long-ago abuse suffered by his beloved stepsister Jamuniya (Priyamani) at the hands of the local police. Meanwhile, in his desperate search for Ragini, Dev finds an ally in the forest guard Sanjeevani (Govinda). While on the wooden bridge, Den and Beera finally clash, but what seems like the movie's climax is just where it starts to get interesting.

While Raavan may not be not up there with Nayakan, Roja, Bombay and Dil Se, it's very recognizably a Mani Ratnam film. His work often touches on controversial real-life figures (Mafia bosses, revolutionaries) and incendiary political issues (terrorist kidnappings, the Bombay riots of 1992-93, the Sri Lankan war), and Raavan is no exception. Ahbishek's Beera, while clearly a version of The Ramayana's Ravana character, is also reputed to be partially based on Kobad Ghandy, a Maoist leader of the ongoing Naxalite insurgency in northern India.

One big difference: Ghandy is a well-educated, world-traveled theoretician; Beera is a primitive warrior. Bachchan plays him as a creature of wild gestures and grimaces, ever slapping his cranium and making chaka-chaka-chaka grunts, with a flashing of clenched teeth not seen since Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster had their showdown at the O.K. Corral. It's a performance both feral and mopey, as if Sly Stallone had taken a crash course in the Stanislavski method before going into the jungle to play Rambo. And when Beera holds Ragini captive, the unmistakable point of reference is the fable of Beauty and the Beast. To put it in movie-monster terms, she is Faye Wray and he the Ramayana King Kong.

What's odd is the lack of chemistry between kidnapper and victim, considering that the actors who play them are husband and wife. The love story the audience expects to develop has no hint of physical or even emotional intimacy. That's partly because the clash of acting styles is as large as the chasm separating Ragini and Beera and partly because Rai, while easy to look at, lacks the spark of a natural performer. In Guru, Abhishek had said moonily to Aishwarya, "You shine as beautifully as polyester," and Rai is always a fairly synthetic actress. The genuine screen charisma here is provided by the Tamil ingénue Priyamani, who invests the supporting role of Beera's stepsister with a flirtatious charm during her bridal scene, then aching despair when the police violate her on her wedding night. And for the film's core emotional connection, you must look to the relationship of the stalwart policeman Dev and his loving wife Ragini.

Spoiler alert: The Dev-Ragini conflict really kicks in at the end of the film, when they are reunited after his footbridge fight with Beera. Suddenly flashing signs of jealousy, the inspector impugns his wife's loyalty to him, and she returns to Raavan. Turns out Dev does believe Ragini; driving her away was his scheme to follow her trail back to Raavan, surround the outlaw with a police posse and kill him. So this is the story of a cop who loves and trusts his wife, yet puts her life in jeopardy by using her as a pawn to get his man. It's another instance of Ratnam saving his coolest surprises for the very end of a film — as in the 1998 Dil Se, where journalist Shahrukh Khan falls for separatist-terrorist babe Manisha Koirala and, as she is about to detonate a suicide bomb that will kill a local politician, embraces her in a final act of love and patriotism. End alert.

The movie looks terrific. This bucolic melodrama is set in some of India's most spectacular natural settings, including Kerala's Athirappilly Falls (which Ratnam also used in Iruvar and Guru), the lush hills of Malshej Ghat near Mumbai and the forests of Karnataka. Cinematographer Santosh Sivan contrasts the lushness of nature with Beera's monochromatic mud war paint and the chalk-smeared faces of his followers, similar to the camouflage daubs worn by Martin Sheen and the Vietnamese natives in Apocalypse Now. In familiar Ratnam fashion, the camera often does 360-degree wind sprints around the actors. When the director creates a compelling fictional universe in other films, his camerabatics express the turbulence of characters in extremis. Here, the whirling technique is a case of going nowhere fast.

As a showcase for some of Indian cinema's most renowned talents, Raavan has to be considered a disappointment. But as a big summer epic about a forest bandit, hey — it's better than the Russell Crowe Robin Hood. And, thanks to A.R. Rahman's infectious songs, this one you can dance to.

• Richard Corliss
• Bollywood star couple Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai join with Mani Ratnam for an ambitious thriller, 'Raavan,' that has Indian film critics steamed