‘Samrat Prithviraj’ review: Akshay Kumar's movie is a tedious ode to an epic character

The historical period dramas in Hindi cinema mainly take either of two routes – a tale of epic romance with a sprinkling of action like ‘Bajirao Mastani’ or an out-and-out action film like ‘Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior’. However, the Akshay Kumar-starrer ‘Samrat Prithviraj’ attempts to be both but fails to do justice to any specific genre.

Director Chandraprakash Dwivedi attempts to weave in all the heroic tales about king Prithviraj Chauhan and his love story with Princess Sanyogita in his 133-minute film but the result is a loosely-bound series of sequences lacking coherence.

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‘Samrat Prithviraj’ follows the stories and events from the 13th-century poem ‘Prithviraj Raso’ written by Chand Bardai – the court poet of Prithviraj Chauhan. The film follows his rise from the ruler of Ajmer to the throne of Delhi and his battles against Muhammad Ghori of Ghazni. The tales of his valour and the two battles of Tarain feature heavily in the movie about the Rajput king.

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Akshay Kumar slips into the battle armour of Prithviraj Chauhan and tries his best to bring the character to life on the screen. Almost 90% of the film features him on the screen but his performance is not much different from most of his recent movies. We have grown accustomed to Akshay Kumar delivering social commentaries on screen and in ‘Samrat Prithviraj’, the only difference seemed to be the costumes and battle armours. However, he does shine in the action scenes and the climax sequence will surely generate a lot of hoots and claps among the audience.

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Manushi Chhillar, who was crowned Miss World in 2017, made her Bollywood debut with ‘Samrat Prithviraj’. As the princess of Kannauj, Manushi looked elegant but the rawness was quite apparent in her acting. The 29-year-old age gap between the leading pair also did not help matters as the chemistry, which would have allowed one to invest in the love story, was missing on screen.

The ensemble cast of Ashutosh Rana, Sakshi Talwar and Sonu Sood play their small but significant roles to perfection while Sanjay Dutt tries his best to shine in a role that can be described as half-baked at best. But, one cannot help but sympathise with actor Manav Vij who plays the role of Muhammad Ghori. He has been presented with some of the most one-note dialogues in the film and most of his acting was restricted to menacing glares toward most of the characters in the film.

There are a number of engaging sequences in the moviebut the lack of a narrative does not allow the audience to completely immerse into the story.

Rather than focusing on a few significant events, the film attempts to show glimpses of everything at a breakneck speed. The result is a boring history lesson that fails to excite you about one of the greatest warriors in Indian history.