On demand: "Kesari"

An early 2019 entry in the cycle of ideologically skewed Indian period dramas - featuring all the flagwaving and Muslim-bashing a certain audience and their governors could desire - Kesari attempts something Zulu-like with the 1897 Battle of Saragarhi. Announced at the deb ball of history by portentous voice-of-God narration (a trope in these things), Akshay Kumar is accessorised with a beard as wide as his turban as Havildar Ishar Singh, the good Sikh farmer-turned-soldier who led a heroic last stand against Afghans attacking a crucial fort in the North-West Frontier. Within minutes, we gather Anurag Singh's film will be trading in a decidedly simplified (not to mention weaponised) idea of history. Faced with British commanding officers who maintain the region's growing tensions are "not our problem", Kumar adjusts his turban (his hero move) before singlehandedly leaping into battle so as to rescue a woman from the invading hordes. Two scenes later, he can be observed leaping off the ramparts of his clifftop station clutching only to a rope, like Ethan Hunt in a Mission: Impossible. Given a dressing down for general insubordination by his superiors, he's eventually packed off to the remote Saragarhi base to train its wayward recruits, like Maverick from Top Gun: Maverick. What we're witnessing, then, is colonial history with the Bollywood equivalent of Tom Cruise choppered into it, a figure who will prove less than willing to serve as a historical footnote or a mere face in the crowd.

The resulting movie is a lot of things: widescreen, overlong, partially entertaining, partially nonsense, partially entertaining nonsense, but increasingly less energised as it goes along, as if it were gradually boring itself to sleep. The one thing is isn't is especially reliable or credible history. It's been conceived first and foremost as another slightly different Akshay Kumar vehicle, that slightly being a consequence of the fact Kumar works so insistently nowadays it's getting harder to discern any real or meaningful deviation from what's gone before. Yes, this is one of Akshay's historicals: "First the Mughals ruled us, then the British," sighs our hero, caught in the grip of nationalist self-pity. "When will we ever rule ourselves?" (Saragarhi can thus be repositioned as a fleeting experiment in self-determination.) But as he sets about drilling the fort's 21 shirtless wastrels and part-time cockfighters into a semi-effective fighting unit, Kesari becomes only vaguely distinguishable from the previous year's Gold, where Akshay drilled the national hockey team to Olympic glory of a sort; swords and guns have been swapped in for sticks, that's all. One might suggest the alternative title Khaki - the prevailing hue of these frames, taking a visual cue from the soldiers' uniforms - were the Hindi title not already translatable as Saffron.

Producers Dharma at least ensure it's attractively packaged: it's one of those flagwavers where you can sort of see why the home crowd turned out for it, even if you don't share its set of beliefs. Singh fills these frames with striking desert formations, and earns bonus points for favouring boots-on-the-ground action, involving hundreds of extras, over cheap, weightless CGI. He's also not quite as swivel-eyed about the ideology as others working within this field have been, although when photographed from a certain angle, the chakkars (steel bands) the Sikh heroes use to keep their headgear in place catch the sun and remind one of angelic halos; the invaders, for their part, are portrayed as distinct tribes with strategies of their own, but are mostly defined by their tendency to brutalise their women, as no Indian has ever done of course. Its biggest problem, ultimately, is that it also has to be an Akshay Kumar vehicle, and thus continually find ways for the star to distinguish himself and justify his doubtless elevated fee. These include: rescuing a small child from a collapsing building, conversations with (inevitably younger) mirage-wife Parineeti Chopra, mansplaining history and philosophy to a desperately unlucky waterboy, bellowing this cycle's watchwords "I will bleed saffron!" to the heavens, and taking to the ramparts before battle to bash a very loud drum at earsplitting volume. Guess who's also the last man standing, flaming cutlass in hand? At some point during Kesari, you may even wonder whether there wasn't some behind-the-scenes negotiation to ensure the star's beard and turban were measurably the biggest on screen.

Kesari is currently streaming via Prime Video; a sequel, Kesari Chapter 2: The Untold Story of Jallianwala Bagh, is now showing in selected cinemas, and is reviewed here.