Kesari review: Our Desi Spartans who could have been presented much more effectively!!!

The last couple of weeks has been rather hectic with professional commitments that I had take care of due to change of personnel in my research team. However, since movies (apart from quiz & sports) has always been a stress buster for me, I had watched a few like “Captain Marvel”, “Badla” & “Kesari” in the previous weekends. Since I was in the mood to use my flexor digitorum superficialis & profundus, I decided to pen my thoughts about “Kesari” which is based on the Battle of Saragarhi of 1897. Despite my interest in history, I must admit that I wasn’t well versed about the event & was eager to know it. So, were the makers able to depict it in a realistic manner???

Saragarhi located on the Samana range in present day Pakistan happened to be the heliographic communication post for Fort Lockhart & Fort Gulistan as it was situated between them. Since the Colonial British relentlessly faced attacks from the Afghan tribals, they had the 36^th Sikhs hold the fort in the region. The movie unfolds with Havaldar Ishwar Singh disobeying the orders of his chief to rescue an Afghan lady from being executed by the fundamentalists. As expected, he gets punished for his actions by the British & is transferred to Saragarhi to take charge of the 36^th Sikh regiment which was battalion of 20 soldiers. Though they don’t quite warm up to his strict & secular methods early on, eventually they gel in & forms a formidable force when about 10,000 Afghan tribesmen declares war on them. How they manage to keep the enemies at bay for a substantial amount of time forms the crux of the movie.

The first time the news of this movie came to the fore was in 2017 when Salman & Karan Johar had announced that they will be co-producing a venture that would have Akshay in the lead. Though Salman had backed out subsequently, the project still went through & became “Kesari”. It was helmed by Anurag Singh who is quite a prominent director in the Punjabi film industry & this happened to be his second Hindi flick after the dud “Raqeeb”. Regarding the script, this was a battle that was truly awe inspiring, but unfortunately Anurag & Girish Kohli failed to do justice to the meaty thread. Apart from Ishwar Singh’s character, none of the others were developed & seemed like stereotypical caricatures. The first half was rather trite & the interactions that the protagonist had with his imaginary wife was a drag. But the second half was damn good & I absolutely love the choreography of the war scenes even though we knew what the end would be. As for other technical aspects, Anshul Chobey’s cinematography stood out while the rest doesn’t deserve a mention.

Akshay was excellent as the protagonist as he was convincing as the righteous, magnanimous, patriotic & brave Ishwar Singh. Action has always been a piece of cake for him & he nails it yet again with some brilliant stunts. As for the rest of the cast, only a few like Mir Sarwar (as Khan Masud), Sumeet Singh (as Gurmukh Singh) kinda caught my attention while Parineeti Chopra was wasted in an inconsequential role.

Verdict:  The film has galloped past the 100 C mark & is on its way to being branded as a superhit. Wish the makers were more judicious in penning the script as the collections would surely have been manifold. Anywaz even though, the first half is rather mediocre with hardly anything significant happening; the latter portion is bound to thrill most of the audience. In short, give it a try!!!

Rating: 2.5/5