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Join UsRating: 3/5 Stars (Three stars)
Star Cast: Sonakshi Sinha, Anurag Kashyap, Konkona Sen Sharma, Atul Kulkarni
Director: A. R. Murugadoss
What’s Good: Akira has a fast-moving and thoughtfully interwoven story.
What’s Bad: Lots of spoon feeding, formulaic action sequences and unnecessary drama.
Loo Break: Like we said, Akira has an interwoven story that would be complicated to understand if you miss the important parts. So wait for the interval.
Watch or Not?: Akira is a good watch for those who don’t mind their films being littered with stereotypical drama, which give you nothing to think about on your ride back home.
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Akira is the story of the eponymous character (Sonakshi Sinha) who is forced at a very early age to learn to protect herself from the bad elements residing in our society. In a well shot sequence, her inspirational father (Atul Kulkarni) lets a very young Akira (Mishiekka Arora) choose martial arts over dance to make her strong enough to protect herself from goons.
This is sort of an un-highlighted turning point in the film. In defending herself from the bad guys, Akira lands herself in juvenile prison. Once she emerges, she and her mother are forced to move to Mumbai to her brother’s house, but she instead chooses to stay in a hostel.
The other part of the story involves a ganja-smoking ACP Rane (Anurag Kashyap) and his band of obedient officers. They spot a huge stash of money, and in their quest to keep it for themselves, end up killing a person. Then begin their unending efforts to keep all this a secret.
Their own colleague, an honest policewoman Rabiya (Konkona Sen Sharma) is handling this investigation, which takes no time to get Akira involved in all this.
Akira Review: Script Analysis
With the kind of story that Akira has, it possessed a lot of potential to make socio-political statements. But the writers have decided to take the easy, commerce-friendly road here. The film has an overabundance of drama in it, and this is not helped by the spoon-feeding dialogues that have characters doing their own expositions at times. At one point of time, Akira compares herself with Jesus Christ in the most cringy scene in the entire film.
That being the worst part of Akira, its best aspect lies in the blazing fast set pieces and allow you no time to stop and think. The story takes many turns, and their unexpected nature is what keeps you invested in the film. However, in this process, the script overlooks the characters and gives you nothing to get emotionally involved in.
Akira Review: Star Performance
Sonakshi Sinha really doesn’t bring anything extraordinary to the table. Her acting is plain average and is given a bit of much needed shine by the action sequences.
As for Anurag Kashyap, he has come a long way from his first full-fledged role in Shagird. His controlled and natural demeanor gives his performance a Hollywood-ish aura that’s a good break from the very archetypal acting by others. His character seems pretty believable, and makes for a good villain to thrust our hate on.
Konkona Sen Sharma doesn’t have a big role to play length-wise, but hers is quite an important role. She does full justice to it with her usual acting style. A noteworthy performance from the other cast is that of Lokesh Vijay Gupte, who brilliantly portrays the corrupt cop in ACP Rane’s gang.
Akira Review: Direction, Music
AR Murugadoss has focused all his attention in making Akira an outright entertainer. And in the process, he has chosen to overlook deeper implications that could have been pulled out of this story. He handles his action sequences well, but there’s no freshness here.
And there’s really a sense of ridiculousness that occurs towards the end, when the titular character compares herself to Jesus Christ.
The first 10 minutes of this film have been wonderfully shot and edited though. Lastly, the background score is to the point and well constructed.
Akira Review: The Last Word
Akira is an entertainer. It will surely manage to get you intrigued right from the start. But there’s too many theatrics to sit through here. Plus, the script as well as the acting performance are not strong enough to make you invested in the lead character, Akira. This film is a good one-time watch, but like we said, if you’re tired of clichéd situations and unneeded drama, you can skip this one. As an overall film for the masses, it deserves 3 out of 5 stars.
Akira Trailer
Akira releases on 2nd Sept, 2016.
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