Movie Review: 'Mohenjo Daro'

The movie has rather rotten resemblance with Bahubali from a partial plot point of view. A son of royalty (of that time!) stroked by destiny and brought up in modesty shows bravery running in his blood and is strongly drawn towards his roots. Overruling his guardians’ wish, he visits his homeland, gets a pretty girl, enjoys with her, comes back to the story, knows the history of injustice to his father, gets angry, bashes up sidekicks and goons, and resolves to bring justice. That is all about it. The only thing is – it’s done unconvincingly. Rather, boringly.

The protagonist, Sarman (Hrithik) is a bronze-coloured, brown-haired young man in the village of Amri. To show how adventure-loving he is, the first scene of the movie creates a dull hype of his heroism when he kills a crocodile with his trident, and the village goes all clapping for him. That night a one-horned animal (ek-singaa) at a river bank pops into his dream, and the next night he decides to go to Mohenjo Daro without even knowing why. He goes there to trade and predictably falls in love with the only good-looking chick named Channi (Pooja Hegde). He gets to know the evils of Maham (Kabir Bedi), challenges him, and again predictably does what a hero should do. Protect the people and destroy the devil. The movie ends with a surprisingly summarizing note. The way those Sindhu waters demolish Mohenjo Daro is quite symbolic of the movie doing the same to our hopes with similar intensity. However, there are four reasons to rejoice: Rahman’s music, a few glimpses of the debutant beauty, intermission, and the arrival of end credits.

While I admire Ashutosh Gowariker to adopt a difficult subject and put his soul into it, I can’t help share what it felt watching. Sarman looks quite kicked to see Mohenjo Daro, partly by the feeble script and therefore mostly by overacting. Hrithik’s thirst for knowing ek-singaa matches his earlier curiosity of knowing Jaadu in Koi Mil Gaya! His nimble limb movements are the only watchable thing left in his acting which too has a limited scope in this movie. Pooja Hegde is beautiful in her role that revolves around revolving around Mohenjo Daro, receiving salutes, and enjoying attention (much like that road traffic inspector in a small town). She wears a bunch of feathers on the headgear and a long fine gown stitched in a way that reveals just enough skin that, I am sure, must have worked as a generous incentive for people of Mohenjo Daro to bow down to her in guise of respect. This is because she is the daughter of a priest and at her birth some holy chap declared that she had the blessing of the mother Sindhu, the river everybody respects and swears by. Thanks to this belief, she seems to be the only girl bestowed with a designer tailor while the rest of the cast wears whatever Ashutosh could muster to give a historical touch.

Sarman emerges as the most eligible bachelor of that era. He is handsome. He knows how to control a mad horse. With his God-gifted engineering skills he designs and helps make the entire bridge of boats to save people in the midst of the horrendous flood. He is not a PMP certified but he executes the entire evacuation project with impeccable timing. With his leadership traits he delegates duties and saves himself at the very last only after ensuring the headcount. All that is fine but Channi seems to like him may be because he can dance without rehearsal and kiss without fear. Just joking. Her character barely bothers and looks lacking passion. The chemistry between the leads looks cold. Kabir Bedi’s acting involves giving his naturally crooked smile, adjusting his ridiculously funny horn-crown, and manipulating a vote of hands. Mentioning the rest would be as time-wasting as watching this movie.