Vicky Kaushal’s Chhaava is weighed down by its own fundamental cluelessness

On the surface, it has everything working in its favour, still nothing quite works. The problems are plenty, yet embarrassingly basic. But none of them stem from the film’s clumsy grip on history. Some will call it an account of the past. Others will argue it’s a myth repackaged as propaganda. But that’s a debate for another day. Chhaava suffers from a far more fundamental crisis — not a seemingly distorted understanding of history, but a cluelessness about the genre it belongs to.

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At its heart, the film operates within a framework so simplistic, it might as well be a bedtime story. Good versus Evil. Marathas versus Mughals. Sambhaji versus Aurangzeb. And to its credit, the opening half-hour does set up this conflict rather well. We see an aging Aurangzeb (Akshaye Khanna), steeped in tyranny yet craving a worthy nemesis. Someone who can shake him out of the monotony of old age; someone who can reignite his thirst for war. And then, with a background score so thunderous it could wake the dead, enters Sambhaji (Vicky Kaushal), charging at the screen. He fights. He leaps. He soars and roars across rooftops. And in the midst of battle, he even scoops up a crying baby. Because what’s a hero without a token act of virtue? Within minutes, the lines are drawn. Good and evil, poised for war. But, being a Hindi historical, Chhaava takes this straightforward premise and turns it into a spectacular mess. And quite expectedly so.

Every compelling story of good and evil has a rhythm: peaks and valleys that lend depth to its conflict. Every compelling story of good and evil thrives on the inevitability of struggle, the moment when good stumbles, when evil almost wins, before the tide turns. But Chhaava refuses this ebb and flow. It is a film of ascension and collapse, but only in one direction. The rise, and rise, and even grander rise of Sambhaji, mirrored by the fall, and fall, and even more humiliating fall of Aurangzeb. A hero untouched by hardship, a villain crumbling without challenge. In its devotion, the film mistakes worship for storytelling, bravery for conflict, victory for drama. It is not a clash of ideologies, not a duel of wills; it is a coronation masquerading as a battle.

After all, no matter how heroic the protagonist may be, he must possess vulnerability for the audience to connect with him, to root for him. Otherwise, grandeur becomes a barrier; he is too towering to relate to, too invincible to invest in. Similarly, an antagonist, no matter how villainous, must exude an air of cunning, a sense of formidable menace that makes him a worthy adversary. Chhaava offers neither. The Mughals are portrayed as incompetent, tactless figures who seem to wait idly for Sambhaji to defeat them. Aurangzeb, in particular, is reduced to an aged, disinterested ruler who commands from his chambers, sleeping beside a lion while his empire crumbles. In contrast, Sambhaji wrestles actual lions, quite literally tearing their jaws apart. The imbalance in characterisation is (stark) almost comical. Every obstacle is a mere formality, every challenge preordained to be conquered. Even in chains, even under torture, Sambhaji does not bend, does not break. And after a while, neither does the monotony.

The kind of dynamic that should have crackled between Sambhaji and Aurangzeb: charged with vigor, drama, and razor-sharp banter — is instead found in his bond with his friend and court poet, Kalash (a spectacular Vineet Kumar Singh). Their relationship lends this otherwise glib epic its only moments of solace, it’s only moments of reflection. Because whenever Chhaava pauses, it doesn’t breathe; it snoozes. And for the most part, it refuses to pause at all. But this ceaseless motion isn’t exhilarating — it’s exhausting. Not a grand, sweeping saga, but an unrelenting, numbing bloodbath. From start to finish, Chhaava is a war without wit, a battle without buildup. Conflict isn’t driven by strategy, mind games, or clashing ideologies; it is brute force, wielded like a hammer against anything in sight. Every problem meets the same solution: violence. And when that doesn’t work? More violence.

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In this sense, some of the set pieces, if not crafted with innovation, are at least shot with imagination. Take the confrontation where Sambhaji finds himself trapped in a room, surrounded by hordes of Mughal soldiers. The scene is remarkably detailed, fiercely energetic. It’s a delight to watch, and it would have worked even better had the film grasped the basic tenets of its genre. But what stays beyond the choreography of combat is an image that follows: a courtyard littered with the bodies of fallen soldiers, a battlefield in miniature. It is a visual that haunts, if only the film had the patience to sit with it. The same goes for its brief moments of humanity: glimpses of Sambhaji as a child, lost and frightened, searching for his mother. It circles back to his entry scene, where he rescues a baby in the midst of war.

Here was the seed of something greater: a warrior not just battling his enemies, but himself. A story about the unseen toll of war, the burden of inherited violence, the ghosts that haunt a man long before the enemy’s sword reaches him. But Chhaava, being a Hindi historical, has no time for nuance. It speaks only in one language; the language of war. And it never stops talking. Quite expectedly.