TL;DR – This is a film that had moments of dire boredom but also had me sitting on the edge of my chair. I wish we got more of the latter than the first.

Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid to watch this film

Kalki 2898 AD Review –

Back when RRR came out two years ago, I realised that I needed to watch more Telugu Language films, and I have been found wanting on that front. Well, if I am going to dive back in, a substantial mythological/Science Fiction romp is 100% right up my alley. Today, we are going to come into this movie with a slight outsider perspective with all its strengths and weaknesses.

So to set the scene, back in the ages past, in 3102 BC, two groups, the Kauravas and the Pandavas, fought for the throne. But when Ashwathamma (Amitabh Bachchan) attempts to kill an innocent, lord Krishna (Krishnakumar/ Arjun Das) curses him to walk the world as an immortal, being never able to die until Vishnu’s last avatar returns. Thousands of years later, in 2892 AD, the world was scorched, and the only city left was Kasi, which lived under the shadow of The Complex, a vast megastructure in the sky. It is a brutal world where everyone is trying to make enough units to get into The Complex while they act with impunity, killing anyone and stealing all the women able to bear children. Bhairava (Prabhas) is a bounty hunter in this world, but when he captures a fleeing Luke (Harshith Malgireddy), little does he know the new trajectory his life will now be on and the dangers he might have incited.

Now, before we dive into the film proper, I did want to take a few moments to give context to my experience with this film, as that may have impacted my time. To begin with, I wanted to see this in the original Telugu, but what I didn’t realise was the only showing I could make it for was in 3D, and can I say that trying to read subtitles in 3D is a challenge. It was made worse by the choice to make the subtitles all white with no border, which meant that on several occasions, I could not read what was being said because it was washed out in the white clothes and locations on the screen. Also, I was at a late-night screening, which had the strength of there being a sizeable Indian cohort, so I always knew when there was a famous cameo on the screen. But also, there were many very young children at the session who were not having a good time with all the explosions and lateness of the hour and were making their displeasure known for all the hear. Neither of these is entirely the film’s fault, but I would be lying if I said they didn’t have an impact.    

Unfortunately for me, I had a very polarising experience with the film, with widely different experiences on either side of the intermission. The first half of the movie has to work us through multiple layers of lore before it can even get into the story, moving from the Hindu Mythology to Post-Apocalyptic hellscape to the Science Fiction rules it is playing with to the political situation of the time. That would be a big ask for most films. However, it is compounded by how the film is constructed at a narrative level. Everything from after they arrive at Kasi until the escape to Shambhala felt like it could have been accomplished narratively in 20-odd minutes, but the story kept getting padded out. There were whole characters that I forgot were in the movie because it took so long to come back to them.

All of this is not helped by the main protagonist of the film, Bhairava, who is deeply unlikable for most of the run time. You can tell from his first interaction what his character arc will be, but it is almost like the film does not trust its audience and has to keep repeating things just in case they didn’t get it the first four times. That is not to say that there is nothing of excellence in this first half. The worldbuilding is fantastic; the video game Destiny might want to come calling about the Design of The Complex over the last human city on Earth, but the design is perfect for what they want. The big bad Supreme Yaskin (Kamal Haasan) keeping himself alive by sucking the life energy from foetuses is metal as heck. It also has moments of genuine laughter and true menace. It was just that those were hidden in a mess, and that was not just my opinion; you could feel it in the energy of the audience.

However, while the first half was a struggle, after returning from intermission, once Sumathi (Deepika Padukone) has escaped, it is almost like we are watching a different film. We start moving at an electric pace with car chases, speeders that form out of the air Tron Legacy style, and colossal showdowns between opposing forces of nature. An unstoppable force meeting an immovable object is always a fun basis for an action scene, and we get a bunch of them. The characters also feel free from everything that bogged them down in the first half and get to run riot. There were moments in that final confrontation where I was giddy in my seat. I love it when people mix mythology with science fiction, and after keeping it in their back pocket for much of the film, it comes to the forefront at the end.

There is a lot to unpack from a mythological perspective, but even for me, who does not have the best handle on the nuances of Hindu Mythology, was able to follow along with at least the broad strokes of what was going on. I did like that they showed that the last two cities on Earth would be multicultural melting pots. But I think there may be some interesting responses to the religious iconography that happens in Shambhala. It also helps when you have a giant of a man that stops his way through everything. While I like the whole back half of this film immensely, I desperately wish that Sumathi had at least a little bit of agency at some point in the movie and that there were some choices made with the music in places.            

In the end, do we recommend Kalki 2898 AD? Well, this is a tricky question to answer. For me, this was a film of two halves that could not be different. You could probably cut an hour of runtime from that first half and not have lost anything important, and that is a hard ask for people. But then the second half was electric, almost like we were watching a completely different film. So, all I can say is do with that information what you want. If you liked Kalki 2898 AD, we would recommend to you Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Kalki 2898 AD
Directed by – Nag Ashwin
Written by – Nag Ashwin, Rutham Samar, Sai Madhav Burra & B. S. Sarawagna Kumar
Music by – Santhosh Narayanan
Cinematography by – Djordje Stojiljkovic
Edited by – Kotagiri Venkateswara Rao
Production/Distribution Companies – Vyjayanthi Movies & Mind Blowing Films
Starring – Prabhas, Amitabh Bachchan, Kamal Haasan, Deepika Padukone, Disha Patani, Saswata Chatterjee, Brahmanandam, Rajendra Prasad, Shobhana, Pasupathy, Anna Ben, Harshith Malgireddy, Kavya Ramachandran & Ayaz Pasha with Anil George, Keya Nair, Vinay Kumar, Venkata Ramana, Hamish Boyd, Sanghwa Shin & Keerthy Suresh and Krishnakumar, Arjun Das, Vijay Deverakonda, Mrunal Thakur, Dulquer Salmaan, Malvika Nair, S. S. Rajamouli, Ram Gopal Varma, K. V. Anudeep, Faria Abdullah & Srinivas Avasarala
Rating – Australia: M; Canada: PG; Germany: na; New Zealand: M; United Kingdom: 12A; United States: na