I absolutely love historical epics and was pretty excited to see this in theaters. However, for some reason I wasn’t able to see it on opening weekend so I decided to wait and see it the next week. To my astonishment, by that time, this film had already been pulled from all of my local theaters. This film bombed hard, but was it actually that bad? After a long time of waiting, I finally got the chance to see it this weekend and well… it’s not very good at all.
I’ve seen a lot of people blame Akshay Kumar for this film’s failure; however, I think this film was doomed from the writing. The first 30-40 minutes of this film are so aimless. We go from seeing Prithviraj fighting lions, to him romancing some girl, to him waging war. The entire time I was just thinking, where is this film going? It oddly felt episodic, almost like I was watching some historical documentary rather than a feature film. The story begins to come together around the 45 minute mark when King Jayachandra opposes Prithviraj’s throne in Delhi, meanwhile his daughters Sanyogita has fallen in love with Prithviraj which causes a lot of friction. Did it need to take 45 minutes to get here?
Afterwards we get to see Prithviraj’s relationship with Sanyogita and how she played an unusually important part in his court. It would have been nice to see her actually do something substantial like enact a policy or something, but she says a couple lines about woman empowerment/duty and well the film leaves it at that. Part of me wishes the film focused more on the relationship between Prithviraj, Sanyogita, and Jayachandra, but maybe that approaches “Jodhaa Akbar” territory. Instead, the film chooses to then shift focus on the enmity between Prithviraj and Mohammed Ghori. Sanyogita and Jayachandra quickly loose relevance. Sanyogita’s death is particularly handled in a jarring manner where we see her commit sita by literally running and jumping into a pit of fire after having just danced; it felt completely tone-deaf and wholly unrealistic.
The biggest issue with this film, is how it bounces around between these ideas. At the start it’s about Prithviraj and Ghori, then we switch to Jayachandra, then its Sanyogita and the court, then we come back to Ghori. It’s all over the place, and the biggest insult here is that we never really get to understand Prithviraj or see him for who he was. The great Prithviraj is a fascinating character in our history, he took the throne at 11 and died when he was only 25/26. He’s an exceptional individual, but the film rarely feels unique and is more like a mash-up of “Jodhaa Akbar”, “Padmavaat”, and “Gladiator”. The Prithviraj here doesn’t feel like a historical figure either, but rather a half-fasted attempt at making a massy commercial character.
The production design here is stunning, and it’s clear that a lot of budget went into this; however, the cinematography simply copies the color pallet of contemporary historical epics (rich red/orange tint for Hindustan, dark grungy green tint for Muslims) making it feel generic. It’s really nothing you haven’t seen before. Even the staging isn’t that inventive, which is especially apparent during the war scene which flash by in the blink of an eye and barely raising my heart-beat. The music also doesn’t really standout, with Prithviraj’s main theme being overused to death.
The casting….sighhh. Who thought it was appropriate to cast Akshay Kumar, a 54 year old man, to play a 25 year old? Sanyogita could have been his daughter and watching him call Sanjay Dutt (62 y/o) “Uncle” was downright hilarious. It just doesn’t work at all, it doesn’t even look like they tried to make him younger. I didn’t necessarily mind Akshay’s acting, but that’s not the biggest issue here. Everyone else was fine, but it’s hard to look past a sorely miscast lead actor.
Supposedly, it took 18 years to research this film, which just feels fake and laughable because I genuinely can’t see where it went. This film is even based on a fictional poem, “Prithviraj Raso”, which has been shown to have historically inaccurate events take place. Why even bother to do so much research on the man’s life when you aren’t even going to use it? Ironically, the best part of this film, the final duel between Prithviraj and Ghori, is completely made up and diverts from not only actual history but also from the events of the poem. Maybe instead of focusing on so much research to inaccurately portray a great historical figure, they should’ve just focused on writing a better film.
