Akira

Remember Prithviraj’s Puthiyamugham? Akira’s format and packaging somewhere reminded me of that movie. It is the remake of the 2011 Tamil movie Mouna Guru, with a difference of making the central protagonist a female. The boldness Murugadoss has shown in coming up with such a positive decision has to be appreciated, but he hasn’t completely rediscovered the movie through the female perspective. With some impressive performances coming your way, Akira from A R Murugadoss is a watchable average film.

Akira is our main protagonist and she is that sort of a girl who reacts when some sort of injustice happens.  Her father nurtured her in a way to fight against all the odds and that even took her to jail. The movie Akira focuses on the college life of Akira. She comes to Mumbai with her mother and as her college days were going somewhat smoothly, she gets dragged into a police case. The movie shows us how Akira goes through this phase and how she eventually comes out clean.

Comparing with the sort of sensibility we have seen in most of Murugadoss’s films that had superstar male protagonists, Akira is more sensible or I should say grounded. The action sequences in this movie aren’t necessarily over the top. Akira isn’t beating up 10 men in one punch and if you are ready to accept her as a trained Karate person, the fights shown here are digestible. The first half of the movie isn’t really dependent of this physical fight factor of our title protagonist. The problem is with the second half were the movie sort of loses its mind game kind of complexity. Plot shifts in to a mental asylum and the movie then onwards is more like Akira’s physical power exhibition.

Sonakshi Sinha was able to live up to the expectations of being that in control strong woman. She emotes nicely and except for that flower pot shot (which you see in the trailer) her efforts in doing the stunts were also commendable. Konkona Sen Sharma gets a character that we forget at one point of time due to the absence of that character for a really long time. To me the real star among the whole cast and the biggest take away of this movie was the discovery of the actor in my favorite director Anurag Kashyap. The badass Tapori style cop was underplayed really impressively by Kashyap and I hope this opens up to many more opportunities for him.

A R Murugadoss adds a pinch of sensible realism in the treatment in the first half of the film. With the best of technicians he has in this film in the form of R D Rajasekhar and Sreekar Prasad, Murugadoss defines an impressive visual appeal to Akira. But were the movie fumbles is in rediscovering the commercial potboiler from the female perspective. I am not trying to limit the ability of women in general; it is just that when you see something like this you are expecting another version rather than a mockery of the usual formula. The music department is okay and the fights were chopped rapidly and was somewhat convincing.

Akira is never a total disappointment. It starts of smartly without much of theatricality in its narration. If they had some more logical intrigue in the second half, this movie would have been a much more engaging thriller.

Rating : 2.5/5