Kesari Movie Review: Akshay Kumar Goes Epic With A Wondrous Acting in this Extraordinary Fable of Courage
Star Cast: Akshay Kumar, Parineeti Chopra, Govind Namdev, Rajpal Yadav, Vansh Bhardwaj, Mir Sarwar and Jaspreet Singh
Director: Anurag Singh
Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)
Anurag Singh’s Kesari brings in an epic tale of true courage to the big screen. The less known yet, highly famed 1897 Battle of Saragarhi addressing the ferocious battle between the 21 valiant soldiers from the 36 Sikh Regiment and around 10,000-strong Afghani army has been precisely covered in this movie. The battle took place in the rugged terrain of today’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Akshay Kumar has taken a literal high rise with a pretty impressive acting for this self-sustained fire-filled above the average film.
Well shot, perfectly directed and accurately mounted, the film comes out in its best form in terms of scale. The production design has been handled by Subrata Chakraborty and Amit Ray, while the applauding stunt coordination has been carried on by Lawrence Woodward (Mad Max: Fury Road, Peter Rabbit) and Parvez Shaikh (Tiger Zinda Hai, Sultan, Gold) and the cinematography undertaken by Anshul Chobey. The entire crew’s efforts can definitely be measured above the grand ambition as expected from the film.
But, there’s definitely a little lag with the film in terms of less dose of the hard-nosed realism. Kesari’s director has gone for a higher shot of action with less defined explorations representing the wages of war and the battling men’s psychology.
Despite of a few flaws, no wonder the undeniable gripping star power of Akshay Kumar lends a lot to Kesari. There is definitely a lot of room for numerous situations of emotional turmoil raging around in the star cast display. The brave men fighting the battle, their survival instincts and the overall self-sustained winning will keep you totally pinned to the film.
The story line revolves around the enemies waiting around the gates of the Fort of Saragarhi, while the British Indian Army’s battle guards in the lack of appropriate communication have the only option of abandoning their posts. However, these brave men opt of staying there and fighting for their pride. This decision doesn’t come out as their motivation derived from their salary but, the uniform they idolize.
As the heroes of history, they tie a kesari (saffron) turban representing courage and sacrifice and in the name of their Guru fight is for their identity and pride.
