Samrat Prithviraj Review: Akshay Kumar’s Film Is Colourful But Spectacularly Soulless

Samrat Prithviraj: A nevertheless from the film. (courtesy yashrajfilms)

Forged: Akshay Kumar, Manushi Chhillar, Sanjay Dutt, Ashutosh Rana and Sonu Sood

Director: Chandraprakash Dwivedi

Score: Two stars (out of 5)

A film that can make no bones about its objective, Samrat Prithviraj is accurately what you hope it to be: a purveyor of fanciful history draped in the glossiest of Bollywood finery. But for all its determined distortions, the movie would have been deemed a satisfactory car or truck of mass entertainment experienced it not been so utterly insipid. It is vibrant, action-packed and laced with music, but it is spectacularly soulless.

Guide actor Akshay Kumar, transported to the 12th century, dons elaborate period costumes and rattles off holier-than-thou homilies aimed at conjuring up a portrait of unblemished rectitude. But, unable to shrug off his starry mannerisms, he falls drastically short of being convincing as the titular historical determine.

Apart from the actuality that Samrat Prithviraj, penned and directed by Chandraprakash Dwivedi, performs rapid and unfastened with details, it cuts down its principal characters to practical caricatures prone to gratuitous grandiloquence.

The declamatory pomposity of the strains that they spout, no one a lot more defiantly than Sanjay Dutt’s blindfolded Kaka Kanha, a man who is for good itching to jump into battle, can take the bloated narrative even even further away from any semblance of relatability.

Produced by Yash Raj Films, Samrat Prithviraj is a laboured, dreary time period drama that can only be described as a inadequate man’s Sanjay Leela Bhansali extravaganza. The vacuous pomp and pageantry and the shallow drama that it serves up for the intent of pushing an expedient narrative about India’s previous incorporate up to a crashing bore.

The film kicks off in the year 1192 in a dusty gladiatorial arena in Ghazni, where Sultan Mohammad Ghori (Manav Vij) and his soldiers gleefully enjoy a blinded Prithviraj Chauhan battle off hungry lions. The courageous prisoner, egged on by his court poet Chand Vardai (Sonu Sood, taking part in the balladeer on whose epic poem Prithviraj-Raso this film is purportedly based mostly) from the gallery, not only stands his ground, but also slays the feline attackers.

In the next scene, as he lies approximately lifeless, Prithviraj utters the identify of his consort Sanyogita, which is a cue for the film to journey again a number of yrs to medieval Ajmer and Kannauj. It is time for a lengthy account of the King of Ajmer’s impromptu marital union with the daughter (debutante Manushi Chhillar) of the perfidious Jaichand (Ashutosh Rana).

But before we get to this level of the saga, Prithviraj Chauhan’s army confronts Mohammad Ghori’s adult men on a battlefield. The fight is brought on by Prithviraj’s conclusion to give refuge to Ghori’s brother who has operate absent with the Sultan’s mistress. It is a war concerning suitable and wrong.

The principal purpose of Samrat Prithviraj is to spotlight the virtues of a Hindu warrior-king who is dedicated to his dharma (religion) and watan (region). In one particular scene, any person asks the virtuous King if he is all set to listen to the fact. His response is: one who is fearful of listening to the truth of the matter isn’t a genuine king. Well, effectively, would not that be a genuinely excellent earth? A person miracles if it exists anymore if it did at all back again in Prithviraj Chauhan’s time.

Samrat Prithviraj celebrates a truthful-minded ruler who demonstrates wonderful heroism and fortitude in the face of the crooked techniques of an invading Sultan, who thinks absolutely nothing of resorting to subterfuge, in his own text, “fareb aur makkari (fraud and deceit). 1 is a guy of unimpeachable morality the other is a mere marauder. This is history lessened to a uncomplicated, selective binary, as Bollywood does so generally these times.

The great Samrat-terrible Sultan construct constitutes the core of the film when it is just not straying into anachronistic debates on the legal rights of females to decide their individual destiny. Not that the movie has lots of female characters – apart from Sanyogita, the only other girl who is permitted to get a term or two in is the mom of the princess (performed by Sakshi Tanwar). However, gender equality is a theme that Samrat Prithviraj addresses with great enthusiasm.

Falsification of history scales new heights when the screenplay carves out a prolonged, verbose sequence that arrives in the wake of Prithviraj’s selection share electrical power similarly with Sanyogita. The go sparks an animated dialogue with an aged courtier more than whether it is appropriate for a girl to have a say in issues of statecraft. Sanyogita wins the argument.

Her joy is shorter-lived. All the large talk shortly operates aground. The girls of Prithviraj’s kingdom commit jauhar when Ghori’s army arrives at the gates and is about to overrun Delhi. The film attempts really difficult to pass the mass suicide off as an act of braver.

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Led by Sanyogita, who sings Yoddha ban gayi principal (I have come to be a warrior), the ‘unflappable’ girls jump into a pit of hearth. Like significantly else in the 135-moment movie, the triumphalism does not have a lot drinking water. All it does is make a mockery of the real truth.

To be good to the movie, it never ever shows any inclination to get in just striking distance of just about anything that resembles veracity. It usually takes what fits its epic narrative, twists it to its particular requires, and then swerves all around it right until it is essential just before moving on to the following little bit of heritage that it feels is ripe for trifling with.

Whilst there is no acquiring absent from the truth that Samrat Prithviraj has a hardly disguised agenda, it also is a motion picture that need to be assessed for its technological accomplishments. In this regard, there isn’t really significantly that can be faulted. Creation designers Subrata Chakravarty and Amit Ray have spared no effort and hard work to lend grandeur to the film, director of pictures Manush Nandan is in top rated sort, and editor Aarif Sheikh lends the film some momentum.

It is the crafting and the characterisations that permit Samrat Prithviraj down. The script is riddled with vacuous bombast and the historic personages who populate it are cardboard reduce-outs that go and speak and make no impression. Amid the actors, the only kinds who make a sustained impression are Manav Vij and Sonu Sood, but they way too are hamstrung by hollow shell of a film.

A historic drama of this magnitude desired extra than just a major price range. It required a sharper eye, a bigger eyesight and a larger degree of integrity, none of which is inside its grasp.