Akira Review

Expectations

Director AR Murgadoss is known for his action oriented films like 'Ghajini' & 'Holiday'. Audience love the action and the thriller part in his films which cater on the mass level. Though, the intensity level was bit low in his last film in comparison to the earlier one, still it stands out on its own.

After the success of both these films, one did expect him to do a film with his earlier superstars, but he decided to choose Sonakshi Sinha in a lead role for his film ‘Akira’. Sonakshi on the other end is known for a certain kind of films, thus its exciting to see her leading this action drama film on her own merits.

The expectations level are not that quite high as the movie has not been properly marketed nor has any charbuster song to cherish. It's only the novelty factor and the name of AR Murgadoss which keeps the expectations level intact.

Story

'Akira' is a story of a small town girl Akira Sharma (Sonakshi Sinha), who moves to Mumbai with her mother (Smita Jaykar). Instead of staying with her brother and family, Akira decides to live alone in a hostel. On the other end ACP (Anurag Kashyap) and his colleagues get hold of some illegal money, which they decide to keep for themselves. In order to blackmail him, ACP's girlfriend, records his criminal conversations on a handycam. But before she could hatch a plan, the handycam gets stolen by some youngsters belonging to Akira's college. ACP and his guys secretly keeps an eye on the whole college campus and one day they find the handycam in Akira's room. Thus starts a cat and mouse chase between Akira and the bad cops.

The 'Glitz' Factor

There are some good scenes featuring Anurag Kashyap and Konkana Sen Sharma. Sonakshi outshines everyone in her action scenes. The dialogues, cinematography and styling of the film is fantastic.

The director keeps the film intact with its content but fails over the editing and screenplay part. The basic premise of the film is appealing and has good scope to keeps one's interest intact in the film.

Sonakshi Sinha has done a decent job in this film. She performs her best in the emotional scene when she elopes from the mental asylum and tries to convince her family. She delivers the action part with ease, but the sequences were not much. Anurag Kashyap is fantastic in his role of a corrupt police officer. He is brilliantly supported by his colleagues in the movie. Konkana Sen Sharma is good in her small part.

The climax though, despite of being a decent one was a huge letdown based on the genre it belongs to. There are many illogical cinematic liberties. The songs fail to register and the background music is jarring at times.

The 'Non-Glitz' Factor

The first half takes its time to settle until the middle part of the film. The tempo goes down again in the second half of the film and moves on a snail pace. There are some over stretched tracks in the second half, especially of the mental asylum. Though, in between the screenplay keeps bouncing back to its right track due to which one stays engaged with this movie.The story narration is bit slow and tiring at times.

Also, the movie promises to deliver some dare-devil type of action but fails to meet up to the expectation level. Actors like Atul Kulkarni and Amit Sadh are wasted.

Final 'Glitz'

The intensity and hard-core action level in 'Akira' is bit diluted. It promises to be a good action thriller but ends up being a decent action drama which had all potential to become a taut film.