Film Review – Akira
The film’s tagline is ‘Life always tests you with those special virtues that exist inside you’.
When a young, rebellious girl from Jodhpur who’s witness to an acid attack on a defensless, innocent girl, takes it upon herself to pay the culprit in the same coin, the convoluted legal system marches her off for three years to a remand home. Fourteen years later, the grown-up — but still recalcitrant — eponymous Akira (Sonakshi Sinha) arrives in Mumbai along with her mother (Smita Jaykar) for a college education. In Mumbai, she falls victim to the corrupt-to-the-core Govind Rane (a brilliant performance by Anurag Kashyap), who changes FIRs faster than traffic lights change colour. He is abetted by his subservient cops, who do their damnedest to implicate her in a series of crimes, none of which Akira is guilty of.
Director A. R. Murugadoss (in this remake of the Tamil ‘Mouna Guru’), in an indirect extension of his 2008 ‘Ghajini’, has Akira kick-butting four corrupt police officers. While Anurag Kahsyap’s character is well-developed, Sonakshi’s lacks credibility and is found wanting — a heavily sedated Akira unflinchingly taking apart her attackers. The first half belongs to a well-etched, brilliant performance by Kashyap, while Konkana Sen Sharma, as police inspector Rabiya, shines in a brief but pivotal role in the second half.
A gripping first half meanders, thanks to a script which loses steam later on. There’s a scene where an asylum inmate, on the run, is shown meticulously driving a van. The action scenes are average and Sonakshi fails to impress.
The promos’ tagline says ‘No one will be forgiven’ — would that include one for not watching the film or …?
