Kites

2010 2h 3m HI

👍

7.2

SOLID

★7.2TMDB · 229

DramaActionRomance

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

A wounded man searches for his sweetheart in the Mexican desert while on the run from the police, bounty hunters, and others.

“Some stories are better left unspoiled.”

WhatsApp X Facebook Telegram

Cast

Hrithik Roshan
Jai Singhania
Bárbara Mori
Natasha/Linda
Kabir Bedi
Bob Grover
Kangana Ranaut
Gina
Nicholas Brown
Tony Grover
Steven Michael Quezada
Cop
Ivan Brutsche
Border Patrol
Luce Rains
Bounty Hunter

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Anurag Basu
Writers: Akarsh Khurana, Robin Bhatt, Anurag Basu
Languages: Hindi, English, Spanish
Countries: India

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 7

ERA

Did you know

Released 16 years ago.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 7

WORLD

Did you know

Dialogue crosses 3 languages: Hindi, English, Spanish.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 7

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Anurag Basu, shot by Ayananka Bose. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 7

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Rajesh Roshan. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 7

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Akiv Ali shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 7

CAST

Did you know

Hrithik Roshan and Bárbara Mori and Kabir Bedi carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 7

WILD

Did you know

IMDB entry: tt1198101 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Anurag Basu directs. Ayananka Bose behind the camera. Rajesh Roshan scores. Akiv Ali cuts. Produced in India. Dialogue in Hindi, English, Spanish.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Released 16 years ago.
2Dialogue crosses 3 languages: Hindi, English, Spanish.
3Directed by Anurag Basu, shot by Ayananka Bose. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
4Original score by Rajesh Roshan. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
5Editor Akiv Ali shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
6Hrithik Roshan and Bárbara Mori and Kabir Bedi carry the top of the cast.
7IMDB entry: tt1198101 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.

The technical file

Cinematography: Ayananka Bose
Original score: Rajesh Roshan
Editing: Akiv Ali
Production design: Rajat Poddar
Costume design: Aashish Dwyer
Makeup / hair: Christopher Trujillo
VFX supervisor: Arjun Mitra
Sound: Anuj Mathur
Stunt coordinator: Mark Brooks
Runtime: 123 min · 2h 3m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Original language: HI
Certification (US): PG-13
IMDB: Kites (2010)

Also by

Anurag Basu

Stills · wallpapers

Selected frames

Full-resolution frames — open one to save it as a wallpaper.

Wallpaper

Community reviews

What people are saying

THE-LENS2026-09-19
Kites (2010) is a 2010 Indian romantic action film directed by Anurag Basu and produced by Rakesh Roshan. Cast - Hrithik Roshan as Jay Ray - Bárbara Mori as Natasha / Gina's sister / Maria - Kangana Ranaut as Gina Grover - Kabir Bedi as Bob Grover Review by Dr Usman Latif Khawaja Damned Dumb Dykes In 70s Samanta style, a masterly movie that alluded to the Indian allegory of a kite being an illusion in time, which now is a genuine classic. In 2010, we are faced with a horror road rom-com which goes all the way on the American freeways from Las Vegas to Los Angeles and then back into Mexico, in the premise of promoting love across borders and demolishing barricades across cross-cultural biases. In doing so, it manages to crash multitudes of vehicles in clumsy car chases, courtesy of Hollywood thrillers like Ronin and Bullitt, and simultaneously crashes all sound barriers with its sycophantic and grotesque background score that grates as harshly as the Nevada sun. Meanwhile, the non-existent plot involves a dance instructor called 'J' \[Hrithik Roshan\], who is a vibrant, extremely vivacious Indian living as a streetwise con man in Las Vegas, who deals in everything from gyrating on dance floors in obsequiously vulgar dance pieces styled from the best of Hema Malini and Vyjayanthimala 'snake dances', as he has run out of all his previous tricks to plagiarise Govinda and Mithun Chakraborty. He is stalked by a ravenous nymphomaniac, played by the lady Kangana, who here is cast as the vamp, while her brother is the villain and their dad \[Kabir Bedi\] is the corny mafia chief who runs the state of Nevada. Meanwhile, a Mexican illegal immigrant is smuggled in, and as she is the most beautiful woman to tread the casinos in Vegas ever since Elizabeth Taylor, everyone from Roshan to the brother of the vamp are enamoured of her. Of course, Mori falls for Hrithik Roshan, and as this is discovered, they are marked for deletion. The two make an escape, struck by the lightning bolt of love, and the whole American-Mexican mafia chases the two lucky lovers, who obviously escape every weapon from a handgun to a bazooka, while everybody else in sight is blasted into smithereens, very similar to our senses, including the audio-visual and the sixth sense. I will suffice to say that every 'genre' is stolen, rigged and tried by the director to make the kite fly, but it does not even budge, as the strings are so entangled in banal stereotypes and plagiarised from every classic Bollywood and Hollywood has made, from 'Buster Keaton' to 'James Cameron'. Basu has two distinctly varied and acclaimed movies in his kit—namely Murder and Metro—and why he took this kitchen sink on board is a paradox, as the storyline is a slander and the casting even worse, as Roshan can neither act nor dance, which is surprising, since the Dhoom 2 title dance was much better executed by the choreographer. Mori and Roshan have atrocious accents, and they mouth the most vile dialogues written in recent times, which ranges from Spanish to English to Hindi to Urdu, as the essential Muslim Samaritan crops up in the middle of Mexico to help the divine lovers. He is called Jamal Bhai and is quickly despatched with the obligatory holy Muslim dialogues. Mori is neither photogenic nor an actress and is a total loss, while Kangana is totally wasted in a charade, darting dragon eyes and dreadful dialogues. The rest of the cast is who is who, with Kabir Bedi as the acrimonious mafia baron, who seems to be rather fed up with fathering two feckless, ferociously evil kids, while all the white Americans are there to be shot at in a turkey shoot. I am amazed that the cinematographer was actually taking this seriously while shooting this horrendous mess with a finger in every pot. But then, if you are trying to make a dyke into a kite, then you cannot be blamed for being dumb, and the only denizen here is Las Vegas, as everyone else is an alien, and that explains the disaster. As to how and why they all got there, you do not want to go there, but the director forces you into the most irritable and lamentable flashbacks to that fracas, which almost forces you into a sonorous Mexican siesta, and that is the only quality of this ground-breaking epic love story that transcends all your senses and still keeps from ascending an inch into the sky as a kite. Rating: 1/10

Production companies