Dhoom 3 Pics From Chicago Shooting, Courtesy Uday Chopra

Bollywood took over downtown Chicago in the late summer of 2012, and the locals noticed. Dhoom 3: Back in Action — the third film in Yash Raj Films' action franchise — was shooting on the streets, the bridges, and the river, with helicopters buzzing Wacker Drive and stuntmen dangling over the Chicago River.

Uday Chopra, who returned as the sidekick Ali alongside Abhishek Bachchan's cop Jai Dixit, was sharing pictures from the shoot — a fun counterpoint to Aamir Khan's famous secrecy. Aamir, playing the villain this time out — a thief who doubles as an acrobat — famously likes to keep his look under wraps until release. It didn't quite work: Chicago's desi fans spotted him immediately, thronged the sets, and he obliged with photos.

The production, working under the cover name "Victor's Venom" in some notifications, filmed at Wabash and Randolph, lower Michigan Avenue, and along the Riverwalk through the fall. One September weekend, police boats closed the river east of the Wabash Avenue Bridge while a helicopter filmed an action scene — a Eurocopter that had previously appeared in Live Free or Die Hard and Get Smart. Katrina Kaif played the female lead, and Vijay Krishna Acharya directed, under producer Aditya Chopra.

The Dhoom franchise had built its brand on bikes and heists — John Abraham in the first, Hrithik Roshan in the second — and Aamir's casting raised the stakes considerably. The film, released in December 2013, would go on to become one of the biggest Hindi hits of its time.

For Chicago's Indian community, though, the shoot itself was the show: their city, doubling as the playground for Bollywood's biggest action franchise, with the stars close enough to photograph.