With the posters giving a feel of QT’s KILL BILL and the title looking like a tribute paid to the master director KUROSAWA (may be because of the presence of Anurag Kashyap), AKIRA appeared to be a fast paced, powerful, energetic action oriented ‘Murugadoss’ film before the release, surprisingly focusing on a bold, female protagonist coming as a positive change. However what turns out to be is a messed up film with a strong, potent idea but nothing close to anything highly entertaining or engaging, missing the expected jaw-dropping action promised in its promotional campaign.
Regarding the tribute, the film clears the doubt in the opening moments itself explaining AKIRA as a Sanskrit word meaning ‘graceful strength’ and then does offer some worth engaging sequences too focusing on the childhood and college confrontations in particular. But unfortunately, the moment they bring in the ‘mental asylum’ into the storyline post the interval, the film starts losing the grip pretty badly and then completely ruins the fine build up taking some huge ‘cinematic liberties’ unconvincingly.
In short though logic has never been a strong feature of Murugadoss’s quick paced, high on action one-man army kind of films, but in AKIRA the director surprisingly executes it all in a quite careless or rather silly manner which neither entertains nor is able to keep you engrossed post the initial hour.
An official remake of a Tamil hit MOUNA GURU (2011), the film was also remade in Kannada and Telugu, but they all had a male hero playing the solid role of ‘A Silent Teacher’. So considering it from a different angle, it was certainly a good move bringing in a young girl as the tough-fighter and roping in Anurag Kashyap to play the main villain along with Konkona Sen Sharma as the parallel investigating officer trying to solve the twisted case.
But what might have looked like perfect on the paper doesn’t get transformed on the screen as expected, resulting in neither a great action entertainer nor a tense crime drama or any investigative thriller. So despite wholeheartedly appreciating the effort put in by Sonakshi Sinha and Anurag Kashyap in their individual scenes, one is unable to rate it as even an average, satisfying film to be precise.
In other words, AKIRA keeps hanging somewhere between its various subplots and gets severely affected by the constantly shifting attention on Sonakshi, Kashyap and Konkona (who is simply wasted carrying a baby bump throughout the entire investigations without any justifications). In fact, it was so strange to see the lady accepting in her very first scene that she has come to the city for joining in that crucial stage of pregnancy all alone, leaving the family behind.
Thankfully having only one song (coming post interval), AKIRA doesn’t have any exceptional cinematography or background music too raising the excitement level. The writing remains predictable and dull post intermission which also becomes absurd towards the climax with the people being killed and the case closed down in a highly laughable manner.
So before opting for it in a costly multiplex, just read its tagline once again saying “No One Will Be Forgiven” declaring it pretty clearly.
Rating : 1.5 + 0.5 / 5 (with the additional 0.5 just for the ‘giving back to the boys throwing acid on girls’ sequence and ‘the college fight’.)
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Akira Review By Bobby Sing, Remake of South Films, Hindi remake of MOUNA GURU, Official remake of South Films, New Hindi Films Reviews, New Hindi Movies Reviews, New Hindi Movies Released, New Bollywood Reviews, Bobby Talks Cinema Review, Reviews By Bobby Sing, New Hindi Films Reviews at bobbytalkscinema.com
