Roy (2015) (Hindi)

In my books, Roy, was one of the movies of 2015 that I was really looking forward to.  The posters gave a feel of a slow but different and dark movie with Ranbir Kapoor and Arjun Rampal.  The rumoured story was one of a love triangle and Ranbir Kapoor playing a thief.  Enough to get your intrigued and want to watch.

I, in fact travelled quite a distance (by Adelaide standards) and more importantly spent quite a bit of money (by Indian standards) to watch Roy.  Nearly $30 (AUD – the equivalent of about Rs.1500 including travel expenses and other paraphernalia), I returned with mixed feelings.

Roy is a movie produced by T Series that isn’t associated with off-beat cinema.  Roy is definitely off-beat but with a famous star cast.  The only thing T-series about Roy would be the songs which are woefully ill placed and not required in a movie with this tone.  They are good songs nevertheless.

It begins with Cyrus Broacha (as probably himself) who is interviewing Kabir Grewal (Arjun Rampal) and makes a complete mess of his lines.  Grewal is a masala director whose past 2 movies are part of a series based on a thief called Roy (Ranbir Kapoor).  Grewal takes his inspiration for Guns 1 & 2 from an event as a child.  He is about to embark on Guns 3.

Grewal is also known to be a playboy and is on girlfriend # 22 (Mandana Karimi). But when Guns 3 takes Kabir to Malaysia, he meets Ayesha Amir (Jacqueline Fernandes) who is also a director.  She is shooting for her next movie – Malacca Diaries. Kabir may have just met his match with #23.

There is a lot of practicality in the script in terms of the relationships defined but there are just too many things that seem out of place or just not required.  Debutante director Vikramjit Singh does well to paint a really pretty picture.  The cinematography is good and the movie is shot in a darkish hue throughout.

The performances are also quite good.  Rampal is confident and smooth as the Casanova director of Bollywood.  Jacqueline Fernandes has always impressed except for her accent.  Ranbir Kapoor is happy playing second fiddle which is a surprise and more importantly he does well.

Roy just doesn’t come together to give us a brilliant movie probably because of lack of experience or more due to lack of giving it everything.  Everyone did well.  No one was brilliant and the end of the day we got a movie that could have been so much better.  Roy will not work at the Box Office for lack of understanding more than quality of execution.  6 on 10.  Worth a one time dekko.

Watch the trailer on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahz3kTiGo3s