Ugh. Salaar is a big, noisy, over-flexing Telugu language Indian action film that baffled and annoyed me. I spent the majority of the movie unsure what was going on, wondering if I was watching a sequel to something I’d never seen.

Salaar: Part 1 – Ceasefire is about… ugh… a woman on the kidnap list of some mysterious bad guys. But a mysterious badass dude who is a badass is trying to save her. I think. But, no, that’s not what the movie’s really about. After an hour passes, it’s actually a two hour flashback to who the badass guy really is… plus a thousand year old hidden Indian empire not on the maps and the huge ring of interchangeable criminals who run it… who are in a state of ceasefire… for now.

This flick is made up of the following: slow-mo, macho posturing, macho posturing in slow-mo, endless exposition, and dramatic statements in segmented five second clips. There are no characters, there are no conversations… just people who make statements and/or look menacing (in slow motion). Everyone who mocks Zack Snyder should see this movie to see what slow-mo overkill looks like.

I think I hate this movie because it reminds me of a Michael Bay film. It has the same overly slick style, hyper cut editing, ponderously loud music that beats you into the seat, and showy action without humanity. It all LOOKS visually slick and stylish but it has no beating heart. It’s a wall of visual noise.

The flick barely qualifies as a narrative film… it’s so obsessed with its exposition-heavy overstuffed backstory that it fails to actually tell a coherent story. Things are happening that follow a plot but the editing slices and dices the film into individual moments where people shout things and immediately cut to something else. There’s no humanity unless you count it simply starring humans.

I think maybe some of the confusion was intentional since it eventually reveals some secrets at the end. Made me feel slightly better about being so baffled in the first two and a half hours. But when your movie has to cut back to “the present” to have a character say, “Wait? What’s going on?” maybe they needed to spend more time knitting together a coherent narrative.

The action is hyperstylized and mostly in slow-mo. I’d like to say the fight choreography was good but it ain’t… since there’s no single shot that shows any actual combat. It’ll just cut to a slow-mo shot of a guy flying through the air after getting punched. I guess credit to the stuntmen though… they sure look like they took some serious falls.

If you are a fan of the hyper slick style of Michael Bay, you might love this film. I don’t and I didn’t. This is an obnoxiously loud, overly stimulated noise fest that’s more interested in being cool than interesting. Not my jam.

Score: 66