RRR Movie Review

Two Real Men, One Fictional Bond

RRR is a 2022 Telugu period action epic directed by SS Rajamouli. It is a fictional story built around two real Indian revolutionaries, Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem, imagining what might have happened had they met and become friends before they became legends. The film grossed an estimated 1,300 to 1,387 crore rupees worldwide and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for Naatu Naatu, the first Oscar ever won by an Indian film in that category. It became the most popular non-English film on Netflix globally after its streaming release.

The Setup

Set in 1920 in British-ruled India, the story opens with British governor Scott and his wife forcibly taking a young girl named Malli from the Gond tribal community. Komaram Bheem, the tribe’s protector played by Jr NTR, travels to Delhi to bring her back. Ram, played by Ram Charan, is a fierce officer in the British Indian Police sent to hunt Bheem down.

Neither knows who the other really is. They meet by chance, save each other’s lives, and form a genuine friendship. The film lets that friendship breathe before it tears it apart, and that is where the emotional weight comes from.

Rajamouli does not use the action to distract from the story. He uses it to tell the story. Every major sequence reveals something about who these men are.

Naatu Naatu and the Oscars

The dance sequence Naatu Naatu sits roughly in the middle of the film and is one of the most purely joyful sequences in any film released this decade. Ram Charan and Jr NTR learned the choreography over months and performed it without doubles. The Naatu Naatu performance at the Academy Awards ceremony became one of the most talked-about moments in the history of the event and introduced Telugu cinema to audiences across Europe and North America who had never watched an Indian film before.

Numbers Worth Knowing

1. Made on a production budget of 336 crore rupees
2. Grossed over 240 crore rupees on its opening day alone, a record at the time
3. Became the highest-grossing film in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana history
4. Ranked by USA Today as the best film of 2022
5. Scored 83 out of 100 on Metacritic, indicating universal acclaim

What Holds It Together

The film is three hours long and it does not feel like it. Rajamouli and his father KV Vijayendra Prasad, who wrote the screenplay, structure the story so that every action scene has emotional stakes attached to it. MM Keeravani’s score shifts from celebration to dread with precision. Ram Charan and Jr NTR have a chemistry between them that is genuinely rare in any film industry, and Rajamouli trusts it enough to let the quieter scenes land before the spectacle begins.

One Thing to Know Before You Watch

RRR is not a historical film and does not claim to be. The real Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem never met. Rajamouli has been open about this. The film is mythmaking in the oldest sense, taking real people and building a legend around them. Go in knowing that and you will enjoy it more.

If you have not seen it yet, watch it on the biggest screen you can find and in Telugu if possible. It was made for that experience.