Ram Setu review: Akshay Kumar film is very Amar Chitra Katha-cum-Indiana Jones, minus the story-telling skills 

It’s all very Amar Chitra Katha-cum-‘Indian Jones’ without the story-telling skills. The screenplay wanders haphazardly over land, mountain and ocean, in order to fulfil its quest: finding the requisite ‘proof’, which includes, believe it or faint, the Sanjeevani booti. Not satisfied with setting up the conflict, which plays out in the Supreme Court on the one hand, and on the high seas, and on the picturesque island of Sri Lanka on the other, the plot gives us bad guys who want the destruction of the Setu, good guy A P (Satya Dev) who turns up out of the blue to help Aryan and his colleagues, scientist Sandra Ribello (Jacqueline Fernandez) and a white person (Piccinato) who is swiftly dispensed with. As chief antagonist, Nassar frowns a lot, and his main man (Parvesh Rana) chases everyone with a gun.

There are also references to the civil war in Lanka, and Jaffna being a hot spot. But all these mentions of current affairs are window dressing, merely. The intention of the film is laid out for everyone to see: the conversion of the secular, science-minded Aryan into a believer who convinces the court of the weight of that belief, which becomes the only truth.

The emergence of Aryan, a sacred stone on his shoulder, from the ocean, reminiscent of a remarkably similar scene filmed on Prabhas at the beginning of ‘Bahubali’, is designed to silence the naysayers. Ditto for when he walks, like another divine figure, on water. But the proceedings are not interested in drawing our attention to any diversity. Don’t be silly.

Actually, done better, this could have been a film which posits these opposing view-points, giving each the pulpit. But this is nothing but a pedestrian film, cobbled together in an even more pedestrian fashion, which is interested only in hammering home its message. It is also the kind of film in which a female scientist, having been dunked in sea water, and having emerged in a cave, gives off a very Raiders Of The Lost Ark feel. With her pink lipstick intact.

Ram Setu
Cast –  Akshay Kumar, Nasser, Satya Dev, Jacqueline Fernandez, Nushrratt Bharuccha, Pravesh Rana
Director – Abhishek Sharm
Rating – 1.5/5