LLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUDDDDDDDDDDD NOISES!!!!
When the boom from the movie stopped pulsating, I gathered the film is about two best friends, Deva (Prabhas) and Vardha (Prithviraj Sukumaran). Having gone through the ringer as kids, sacrificing political power for the sake of their friendship, Deva is the muscle, and Vardha the connected schemer. Fast forward to their adulthood, and a new wrinkle. A powerful businessman is terrified because his daughter Aadhya (Shruti Haasan) snuck into India without knowing that various powerful groups are out to get to him through her. Before she is intercepted, her dad’s friend Bilal (Mime Gopi) hides her in a coal mining town, where Deva is living with his mom (Easwari Rao), the school principal. Aadhya becomes enamored with Deva, slowly learning the story of what happened between Deva, Vadha, and the greater political conflict that goes back a thousand years.
Salaar, much like all its characters, is at war with itself. On the one hand, Prabhas thinks this is an action hero vehicle for him to look like the mountain of a man that he is. There’s a few scenes where he Steven Seagal’s his way through battalions of soldiers/mercenaries that’s passingly fun. The movie builds to these big moments that reset the stakes to push the plot into the next phase. The rest of the cast? They’re in a political thriller, that goes down an Inception like convoluted mess of flashbacks within flashbacks with a dozen or so players across multiple timelines and cities that are really hard to keep track of. The two warring films are oil and water: any attempt to listen though the dense backstory is drowned out by the insistent action score, demanding Prabhas show up soon to kick some ass. And while I enjoyed some of the Zack Snyder inspired beat downs, they take a really long time and bog down an already bogged down movie so much so that it had to be split in half and end on a rushed cliffhanger, leaving 5-10 intriguing characters dangling in a backstory, awaiting Part 2.
I wish Part I had taken lessons from Across the Spider-Verse. There are two types of groans when you hit a movie cliffhanger: the Spider-Verse one, where everyone wanted it to keep going because the story was so engaging. The 2nd one happens after watching a nearly 3 hour slog realizing there’s probably 2.5-3 more hours to go. This goes for both Spider-Verse and Salaar: just stick the landing please? And no thank you, don’t give me a 20 minute recap of what I missed, just drop me right in to Prabhas’s 3rd act action hero film this movie really wants to be and make the action hella fun.