Kalki 2898 AD (Hindi) movie review: Nag Ashwin’s film is a heady mix of mythology, science, action and fiction that works in parts.
Kalki 2898 AD (Hindi) movie review: Bring a South and North crossover film, and it’s enough to get the movie goers excited. Kalki 2898 AD enjoyed all the pre-buzz for its superlative action, VFX, storyline and what not… but the 3-hour long film turns out to be rather chaotic and complicated, and it confuses you more than you can comprehend.
We’ve seen enough and more ‘good vs evil’ stories in India cinema, so the basic outline of Kalki 2898 AD is nothing extraordinary. You didn’t understand the trailer? Wait till you watch the film, you might just come out of the theatre still feeling the same – not understanding it one bit!
Writer-director Nag Ashwin’s wild and wicked premise of blending reality with fiction tests your patience. At first, it might look like a great idea to start the film with the climax of Kurukshetra battle where Ashwatthama was cursed by Lord Krishna to live till eternity to understand his mistake yet give him a chance at redemption. But as the story progresses, and more fictional elements take over, you realise how lame it actually is to have such a convoluted plot that it almost becomes impossible to absorb it.
600 years after the Kurukshetra battle, we are taken to an absurd world with three fictional places — Kashi, Complex and Shambala. Each with a purpose. But what’s that? We don’t know. All that’s told to us is that Kashi is the only city that exists and it’s ruled by Supreme Yaskin (Kamal Haasan), an evil force that operates from Complex (an inverted pyramid hovering over the city). Yaskin wants a serum from a fertile woman.
Here enters an impregnated lab subject SUM-80 aka Sumathi (Deepika Padukone), who escapes from Complex, and bounty hunter Bhairava (Prabhas) is out to catch her along with his AI droid sidekick BU-JZ-1 aka Bujji (voiceover by Keerthy Suresh). He encounters Ashwatthama (Amitabh Bachchan) who must protect and rescue Sumathi at all costs, as she is bearing the unborn child, Kalki, the tenth avatar of Hindu god Vishnu, who is believed to have descended to earth to protect the world from evil forces. That’s the core of Kalki 2898 AD, but it stretches a little over three hours.
A visual spectacle by all means, Kalki is equipped with world-class VFX that doesn’t disappoint. With sets mounted on a huge scale, there are spectacular sequences of large structures, mid-air action and robotic characters that add to the sci-fi drama. Kudos to Djordje Stojiljkovic for a brilliant cinematography.
Prabhas might have been sincere in whatever he does onscreen, but there’s no depth or substance in his character arch. Firstly, he gets the most underwhelming entry scene and then to see him do lame comedy and crack jokes that don’t land, I felt bad for him. Saaho and Radhe Shyam had already done that damage, Kalki didn’t need to again put him in that caricature-ish space.
Nag Ashwin seems to have picked several nuggets from Bollywood, Hollywood and other south language films, and you can’t help notice these references. The labs in Complex and Yaskin’s serum injecting scenes remind you of Vivek Oberoi’s Kaal from Krrish 3. Prabhas pushing a button on his shoe and flying in the air is another version of Hrithik Roshan’s Krrish.