Kites

<p>Jay Ray ( ) is a dance teacher in , . As a side hustle, he marries immigrant women to get them in exchange for money. When Gina ( ), the rich daughter of a powerful casino owner, Bob Grover ( ), falls for him, Jay goes along to marry into money. He discovers that his future brother-in-law, the vicious, homicidal Tony ( ), is about to marry a Mexican woman named Natasha ( ), whom Jay knows as Linda, the last of the immigrant women he married. On the night before “Natasha” and Tony’s wedding, Linda and Jay humorously agree to a “divorce”. A jealous, gun-wielding Tony arrives at her apartment while Jay is there. After he hits her, Linda impulsively knocks him out with a heavy object while he tussles with Jay. Linda and Jay go on the run toward Mexico, with Tony and the police in pursuit. They are helped by a friend of Jay, Robin ( ). Robin gives them fake passports and IDs so that they can escape and build the life they want. In the following week, Jay and Linda get married in Mexico. On the day of their wedding, they come back to their house. There, Robin comes to give them the passports and is unexpectedly shot by Tony and his men. Linda and Jay escape, but Jay is shot in the process. During a car chase, Linda stops the car by a train, puts Jay aboard it, and drives off. Back in the present, Jay meets with Jamaal, one of Bob’s employees, and is ambushed. Jamaal is killed, but not before telling Jay of Linda’s whereabouts. Jay kills off all of Tony’s men and then kills Tony by smashing his face into the car door. He is then shot by Gina. He drives off to the location where Jamaal said Linda was last seen. It is shown that after Jay was put aboard the train, Linda was ambushed on a cliff and sent Jay a text message saying, “I am going…Sorry, forget me.” She drives off of the cliff, killing herself by drowning. Jay cries and then smiles, jumping off the cliff as well. Finally, he is reunited with Linda under the , and they embrace in death. was approached to star opposite , although she turned down the offer for undisclosed reasons. s worldwide distribution rights were sold for (US$32.8 million) to Reliance big pictures in 2010 (except Mumbai). The satellite rights were bought by Sony TV group, while the music rights were bought by T-series/Big music. was on 3000 screens in India, and across 30 countries and 500 screens globally, according to distributor . It opened on 208 screens in North America, making it the largest Bollywood release there to that time. To help promote the film, mini “music videos” were released online, each about one minute long and featuring a song from the soundtrack set against scenes from the film. The clothing brand , which features as its brand ambassador, launched a clothing range. A photo shoot for the campaign was shot in the , featuring Hrithik Roshan and Bárbara Mori. While the Hindi version of with most dialogue in Spanish was released on 21 May 2010 in India, the international version was released one week later, on 28 May 2010. The film was scheduled to be released in over 60 countries. was released in a second international English-language version as , “Presented By” , recut by his regular editor, , with new music by using remix techniques developed in the series . The film received an 72% rating on the film aggregate site from 29 reviews, with the consensus being, “Thoroughly overwrought in true Bollywood fashion, is deeply flawed —and too effervescently charming to resist.” The movie generally received mixed reviews in India. The chemistry of the lead actors and the cinematography were specifically praised by Indian critics Anupama Chopra and Raja Sen. of said “Thrilling action set-pieces, a super-fluid dance number to show off Hrithik’s killer moves, and repeated glimpses at the toned bodies of both lead stars. It’s almost enough to forgive the uniformly bad acting of all supporting cast”. of said “the film doesn’t become more than the sum of its parts because the second half is flat and in places, outright foolish”. Noyon Jyoti Parasara of AOL India stated, “It fails in the primary promise of a love story which surpasses language barriers,” while Shubhra Gupta of calls it “really old wine in a sort-of new bottle”. In the U.S., Jeannette Catsoulis of called it “a lovers-on-the-lam blast of pure pulp escapism” that “caroms from car chase to shootout, from rain dancing to bank robbing with unflagging energy. It’s all completely loony, but the stunts are impressive, the photography crisp and the leads so adorably besotted that audiences might as well check their cynicism at the door.” of said, “Bollywood enters territory in a hybrid film that takes the heightened emotions, wild tonal ranges and impeccably crisp technique of modern Hindi cinema and puts all that in the service of a tragic love story straight out of Mexican TV. … As an old-style Hollywood romance in modern dress, it delivers what people say they want when they say, ‘They don’t make pictures like that anymore.'” of the said the film “draws from , , [and] chase thrillers with stunts so preposterous they verge on parody – and it gets away with everything because of [director] Basu’s visual bravura and unstinting passion and energy.” said the film “opened to a bumper response at most places” in India, but noted “reports are not encouraging, the biggest reason for failure are being the film has a lot of Spanish dialogue and English.” The film collected (US$10.78 million) net in its lifetime run in India. On its first weekend in the North America, the film opened in 208 theaters and ranked No. 10 in the box office, grossing $958,673. It was the first Bollywood movie to reach the weekend top ten, though had a larger first-weekend North American gross, with $1.9 million at 120 theaters, reaching #13. debuted at No. 10 in the UK, with an opening of £174,000 from 70 screens. Overall, the film was rated as a flop by . The film fared very poorly in the United Kingdom and earned £9,110 on 31 screens, with the per-screen average working out to £294. In the first week that both films were out together in the United States, did only one tenth of the business that the original did, and less than half on a per-screen basis. Box Office Mojo shows that while the original film was able to become the first ever original Bollywood created film to score in the “Top Ten” of the overall Hollywood Box office tally on its opening weekend, the hybrid version only managed to place 51st on its first weekend. Won Nominated Nominated Nominated music album was composed by , with lyrics penned by and Asif Ali Beg. The songs “Dil Kyon Yeh Mera” and “Zindagi Do Pal Ki” (both sung by ) became a rage while other songs were also successful. Variety Magazine said the music “ranges from hip-hop to Enya-esque ululating.” The movie’s main romantic theme has been described as “identical in melody, key, and instrumentation to ” ” (Theme for Aragorn and Arwen), written by for “, though Enya is not given any composer’s credit for the music in Kites.</p>