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00:00While the movie opens beautifully with the Jalyan Bala Bagh massacre, I have a problem with it because it was so stylized that it rang emotionally hollow.
00:09Hi everyone, this is Manjusha Radhakrishnan. I am the entertainment editor Gulf News.
00:13I was there for the first day, first show of Bollywood film Kesuri Chapter 2 starring Akshay Kumar, Madhavan, Simon Paisley, Georgina Cassandra and Ananya Pandey.
00:23Now, it's directed by Karan Singh Tyagi. This is a historical courtroom drama that follows the events after the brutal massacre that happened in 1919.
00:32It's the massacre that happened in Punjab. It's called the Jalyan Bala Bagh massacre where unarmed protesters, thousands of unarmed Indian protesters were killed and shot dead by the British.
00:43Now, it's a very bloody chapter and a dark chapter in Indian history. We have read it in textbooks.
00:48So, Karan Singh Tyagi makes it a point to dramatize the events around it.
00:53The focus is on Shankaran Nair, as it should be. He is a lawyer who takes on the British Raj.
00:59At first, he is an anglicized colonial loyalist. He was getting his knighthood when the massacre happened.
01:04He was siding with the British. But then certain events make him question his loyalty and he moves to the other side where he starts to bat for Indians.
01:13Now, one thing I have a problem is with the casting. Now, if you're playing a South Indian lawyer, a Malayali lawyer, Akshay Kumar plays a South Indian Malayali lawyer.
01:23Now, I have a pet peeve when it comes to representation and casting of non-South Indian actors in South Indian roles.
01:30It just makes no sense, especially when it's Malayali. Look at Akshay Kumar. He had just one Malayalam line to say and he said it in such an awkward accent towards the end.
01:40It was such a powerful scene where he tells his wife that, you know what, I'm defeated. Let's go back home.
01:45It was supposed to be an emotional scene. But all we get is like a very hollow.
01:49It rings so hollow and it looks so inauthentic. And that's a disservice to the movie.
01:54There were many points in the movie where I thought Madhavan, who's a South Indian actor, had more gravitas, more punch.
01:59He did a better job and he would have done much better in Akshay Kumar's role, which is sad.
02:05If you know Akshay Kumar's brand of cinema, it's usually hyper macho. It's hyper nationalistic.
02:10It's mostly saffron agenda. We all know it. And it's OK.
02:14Like, I mean, those are enjoyable movies as well. They have a story to tell. I'm good with that.
02:18But in this case, the casting was very, very unconvincing as well.
02:22And somewhere along the way, I felt that the makers thought being loud, volume equals valor.
02:29Like the scenes in which Akshay Kumar screams into the courtroom, trying to pin down Brigadier Dyer.
02:36Those are very caricaturish.
02:38Another pet peeve that I have is like white, the British speaking Hindi.
02:43I mean, I know they are making a great effort. It is accented Hindi, but it's never authentic.
02:49And that is translated on screen as well.
02:52I think one of the few movies that did well when it came to casting was in Rangde Basanti,
02:57where the woman played by Alice, actress Alice, she did a great job in speaking Hindi.
03:01It looked convincing as well. It wasn't caricaturish.
03:04But here, British actor Simon Paisley doesn't do a great job of it either.
03:10While the movie opens beautifully with the Jallianwala Bagh massacre,
03:14I have a problem with it because it was so stylized that it rang emotionally hollow.
03:19Now, this is one of the most brutal and bloodiest chapters in Indian history.
03:22What we should have felt is feeling very terrible.
03:25But the entire, the macabre events were shown in such a stylized way
03:30that it felt like a fashion shoot and it rang emotionally hollow.
03:34It didn't work for me as well.
03:36While there were good bits about it, I thought Ananya Pandey, who's a young actress,
03:40she plays a young lawyer who's the assistant to Akshay Kumar in the legal courtroom drama.
03:45Now, she did well. I mean, she acted with restraint.
03:48So did Madhavan.
03:49I thought Madhavan really held the movie together.
03:53There were parts where he looked really troubled.
03:56Like he has taken on Akshay Kumar as his adversary.
04:00He too was a colonial loyalist.
04:02He realizes that he's batting for the British
04:05and he wants to have one up with Akshay Kumar's character
04:08because he thinks that Akshay Kumar, who was once his friend,
04:12had ratted him out and publicly humiliated him about being a bastard kid.
04:17So that was an interesting take.
04:18I thought Madhavan did a fabulous job of holding it together.
04:22Even when he was given very, very vacant lines
04:25like humming the tune of Titanic and telling Akshay Kumar's character
04:29that this, you know, be ready to sink like the Titanic.
04:34These are very, very silly lines.
04:36But the way Madhavan said it, I think it lent itself some gravitas.
04:40There was some gravity to the situation.
04:42I think Madhavan and Ananya Pandey were really strong as well.
04:45Another pet peeve I had was Georgina Cassandra, who plays Akshay Kumar's wife.
04:49She's supposed to be a Malayali, but is dressed like a Tamilian.
04:53This almost felt like cultural appropriation
04:55when it should be a celebration of South Indian culture.
04:58They just get representation wrong all the time.
05:00I think they have somewhere Bollywood and Hindi filmmakers
05:04have a difficulty, you know, demarketing between Malayali,
05:07where we are from Kerala, and Tamil Nadu.
05:10You could see that kind of like identity crisis happening
05:13where they didn't know which stage should the characters belong to.
05:17Georgina Cassandra's character, false prey, to that stereotype.
05:21Having said that, it's not a badly made film.
05:23You can still sit through it.
05:25But all of these loud, hyper-patriotic lines,
05:29they bring the movie down.
05:31It just, at some way, I feel emotionally, it was very vacant.
05:35Although there was a lot of roaring, there was no core.
05:38I've gone with 2.5 out of 5.
05:40For a full review, go to gulfnews.com.
05:42We'll see you then.