Kalki 2898 AD Movie Review: Kalki baat purani

Movie Kalki 2898 ADUA ActionDir Nag AshwinCast Prabhas Amitabh BachchanRating 35While on screen only for brief but effective bits Amitabh Bachchan 81 plays an eightfeet tall Ashwatthama aged 6000 years plus in Kalki 2898 AD Which from our basic reading of Mahabharat means hersquos immortal although looking almost mummifiedYou also donrsquot need Devdutt Patnaikgrade knowledge of ancient Indian texts to know that Kalki refers to the final and still anticipated saviour avatar of Lord VishnuOf which Lord Krishna was onemdashhaving fought with the Pandavas against Kauravasrsquo army with Ashwatthama in it in the battle of KurukshetraThis film starts with the Mahabharat and a younger version of Bachchan which made me wonder if that gent was an AI image or simply an actor with looks matching the superstarThe hero here is one Bhairava many millennia later given to gentle buffoonery Much like the ditsy Deadpool with deadpan humour if you mayFor all the contextsetting with mythology posing as history itrsquos this lead character you learn nothing aboutmdashleaving you scratching your head on occasion up until the end of this futuristic superhero cum dystopian scifi alternate realityWhatrsquos important from the audiencersquos perspective is that the badass bountyhunter Bhairava with immeasurable superpowers is actor PrabhasEven selfreferencing the number of his ldquorebel fansrdquo in the theatre since hersquos the anointed Rebel Star after all Hersquos introduced with an action sequence underlaid by a track that goes from devotional Punjabi hiphop to western jazzclassicalThat flex was in fact my initial apprehension stepping into the hall Given Prabhasrsquos pictures that Irsquove groaned through since BaahubaliTo be clear on that account Kalki 2898 AD gt Radhe Shyam gt Adipurush gt Saaho gt Salaar But even more importantly with Kalki and which is rarest for a film that goes on for three hours straight second half gt first halfThis isnrsquot to suggest the Prabhas titles mentioned above havenrsquot had better footfalls than many desi movies at the marquee still Which explains the level of investment for CGI gems in this film of course Hollywood can easily afford this bang because theyrsquove got a global market to recover their buckThe only way an Indian movie can match such scale is if itrsquos at least watched by Indians across regions for whatrsquos termed the lsquopanIndia picturersquoThe audacity of sheer ambition places Hyderabad writerdirector Nag Ashwin Mahanati 38 aiming for an lsquoSS Rajamoulirsquo no less Or even Ram Gopal Varma from the same city for that matter Both the latter directors make a cutesy cameo in KalkiHence also a panIndia casting along with Telugu lsquorebel starrsquomdashif you notice Deepika Padukone Bollywood heroine originally from Bengaluru as female leadEven Disha Patani from Bareilly UP opposite Prabhas while the Malayali Dulquer Salmaan shows up as his father Besides Bachchan fighting Bachchan in what I felt was the moviersquos ultimate moneyshotThe villain with the longest screen time is the Bengali lsquoBob Biswasrsquo Saswata Chatterjee playing Commander Manas chief consigliore of one Supreme ie the Tamil superstar Kamal Haasan a halfnaked fakir with bodyface of Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy You can hardly tell Haasanrsquos here though and hersquos hardly there anyway He lords over a parallel posh universe called Complex that everybody in the only surviving city Kashi wants to get into Think of it as gated communities of Gurgaon in 2024 on a gargantuan scale if you mustlsquoUnitrsquo is the unit of currency in this postapocalyptic netherworld with grungy gadgets and dusty exteriors You can spot glimpses of Dune but more likely Mad Max while noticing Handmaidrsquos Tale with a touch of Transformers and what is the rebel town of Sambaala if not a bit like Wakanda noNo All art indeed visuals come from other artsvisuals I find the obsessive referencepointing rather pointless Kalki is bulky In the sense of the weight of its SFX and expectations It could get buried under itThe way Ayan Mukerjirsquos Brahmastra did perhapsmdashoverloaded with subplot after subplot or even Mani Ratnamrsquos Ponniyin Selvan that I found incomprehensible for the lack of preaccess to the original epic I needed a lsquokunjirsquo examkeyWhat the writers laudably do here instead of creaking under their selfbuilt heaviness is barely let the story get in the way of the spectacle Keeping it all too simple stupidOr spectacle for spectaclersquos sake That works well as you zone out and chill rather than go ldquoSTFUrdquo which happens quite often with attempts like theseThink again about expectations since I bought an IMAX ticket for a show that got cancelled owing to tech reasons at PVR Jio World Mumbai Okay let me not bore you with deets of my dayWhat about the fellow viewer I met at the venue Usha whorsquod first bought IMAX 3D ticket for Kalki that got downgraded to 2D IMAX so she picked up another ticket for a regular 2D show but attempted the cancelled IMAX still and then another regular show afterhellip She was down almost R2000 without a second of the first day first showI hope she got half her workdayrsquos worth eventually There is similarly the sequel lined up of Kalki seemingly with several setpieces that are seriously second to none here already Irsquom looking forward to that You could to this surely

Kalki 2898 AD Movie Review: Kalki baat purani

Movie: Kalki 2898 AD
U/A: Action
Dir: Nag Ashwin
Cast: Prabhas, Amitabh Bachchan
Rating: 3/5

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Home / Entertainment / Bollywood News / Article / Kalki 2898 AD Movie Review: Kalki baat purani

Kalki 2898 AD Movie Review: Kalki baat purani

Movie: Kalki 2898 ADU/A: ActionDir: Nag AshwinCast: Prabhas, Amitabh BachchanRating: 3/5

Trending Stories

Latest Photos

Latest Videos

Latest Web Stories

Mid-Day Fast

Movie: Kalki 2898 AD
U/A: Action
Dir: Nag Ashwin
Cast: Prabhas, Amitabh Bachchan
Rating: 3/5