Kites

Indian-made and trilingual in Hindi, Spanish and English, Kites is set — and was mostly shot — in the American Southwest, although in its backlit visual overkill, complete with neon reflected in rain-drenched streets, it more closely resembles the more overwrought Hong Kong gangster romances of the late 1980s. Jay (Hrithik Roshan) rolls off a freight train with a gaping bullet wound and a lot of back story to unload. A con artist, not as amoral as he thinks he is, Jay makes the mistake of falling hard for Natasha (Bárbara Mori), the fiancée of a spoiled young Sin City prince of crime, setting up a scenario that director Anurag Basu shoots like a series of windswept fashion videos. Mori, a Mexican telenovela star, is almost a match for him. Not even the incoherent mishmash of plot can entirely dim the appeal of this matchup between a Punjabi and a Mexican of almost equal comeliness.