Samrat Prithviraj

Dr Chandraprakash Dwivedi's direction is fine. He has handled the grandeur very well and a few scenes are executed exceptionally. It is evident that he has given his all to this project. However, a few developments give a déjà vu of films like BAJIRAO MASTANI [2015], PADMAAVAT [2018], PANIPAT [2019] etc. The pacing is neat but, in a few places, the narrative moves quite swiftly. This is especially in the second half, where the second battle of Tarain is just not shown and it hampers the impact. SAMRAT PRITHVIRAJ starts on an intriguing note. The entry of Akshay Kumar will leave you stunned. The first battle of Tarain is clapworthy.

That it would blow over was perhaps not intended, and precisely what leaves us disappointed as we walk out of the theatre. It is a film about war and valour, both of which require less sloganeering and more fighting. If you aren't put to sleep by the dialogue-baazi and manage to stay awake for the scanty fight scenes to appear, you will be put off by the terrible CGI waiting to greet you there. To think that this is a YRF production! In Samrat Prithviraj, Sonu Sood plays the putative bard. It is ironic that despite emerging as the mass messiah off screen, Bollywood still brings in Sonu to sing songs of the real heroic hero on screen — Akshay Kumar.

But at no point is the plot or any character given significant breathing space, so intent is it upon glorifying its subject: Chand Bardai (Sonu Sood) has more ardour in his gaze than Prithviraj’s lady love (Manasi Chhillar, who comes off more contemporary than period, and leaves little impact). Sanjay Dutt’s Kaka Kanha whose undying faithfulness to Prithviraj is tested more than once, does double duty of a court jester and an affectionate uncle: how do you do a mainstream film without a comic figure? And then there is Ashutosh Rana as Jaichand, whose name has long been synonymous with being a traitor, and Sakshi Tanwar as his voluble wife, who carry their scenes, but are given softer treatment than they deserve, because, hey, we know who the real bad guys here are. Not only does Prithviraj’s bravery makes him a combination of Bhishma and Bheem (in the words of the always-adoring Bardai), he is made into an early feminist, spouting inadvertently funny lines in support of women generally, and specifically his Sanyogita, whom he encourages to share his throne and listen to the people. Did anyone else feel a dissonance when these same sword-wielding ‘veeranganas’ jump to their death, committing ‘jauhar’? That leaves Akshay doing his thing: cleaving through ‘dushman fauj’ (enemy soldiers), twirling in the song-and-dance, fighting off the inexorable advance of the treacherous outsiders. As befits its simplistic, shorn-of-nuance tone, the film is loud and lurid, lurching between dialogue-baazi and blandness, and staying determinedly faithful to its stated intent.