Brilliant Amitabh Bachchan and Prabhas power director Nag Ashwin’s ambitious mythology-inspired science fiction film that soars, but falls just short of be International viewers unfamiliar with the specifics of the ancient Kurukshetra War between the Kauravas and the Pandavas think Hatfields and McCoys, only with chariots and spears may want to brush up on Indian mythology before approaching “Kalki 2898 AD,” if only to make some sense of repeated references to that clash. Such foreknowledge could be especially useful during the CGI-amped opening scenes that illustrate how Lord Krishna cursed the warrior Ashwatthama to an eternal life as punishment for a grave misdeed, but allowed him a shot at redemption if he someday assisted in the birth of Kalki, the tenth and final avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu.
On the other hand, moviegoers throughout the world should have no trouble identifying (and in many cases appreciating) Ashwin’s numerous visual and narrative allusions to “Dune,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Star Wars,” “Black Panther,” “Blade Runner,” “Mad Max,” the Harry Potter movies and a dozen or so other pieces of intellectual property. Extended and unwieldy hunks of “Kalki 2898 AD” are devoted to world-building and character-introducing in parallel plotlines that take a long time to intersect. As a result, there are too many sluggishly paced stretches where the passing of time is keenly felt and the storyline is obscured by confusion. But the aggressively spectacular (and, again, CGI-intensified) action set-pieces are generously plentiful and undeniably thrilling, and the lead players are charismatic enough, or over-the-top villainous enough, to seize and maintain interest. Will that be enough to justify two followup flicks? It’s hard to say from early box-office reports.
After the fateful encounter on the centuries-earlier Kurukshetra War battlefield, “Kalki 2898 AD” fast-forwards a few thousand years to Kasi, a familiar looking but impressively detailed dystopian slum described variously as the first and the last viable city on Earth. High above the huddled masses, there is the Complex, a humongous inverted pyramid where, not unlike the elites in “Metropolis,” an Emperor Palpatine lookalike ruler named Supreme Yaskin (Kamal Haasan) and other members of the in crowd savor an abundance of luxuries — including, no joke, their very own ocean — while served by manual laborers recruited from below.
Bhairava (Telugu superstar Prabhas), a roguish bounty hunter who rolls in a tricked-out faux Batmobile equipped with a robotic co-pilot, yearns to earn enough “credits” to buy his way into the Complex, where he can crash the best parties, ride horses through open fields and avoid all the debt collectors hounding him in Kasi. He seizes on the opportunity to make his dreams come true when a colossal reward is posted for the capture of SUM-80 (Deepika Padukone), an escapee from the Complex’s Project K lab, where pregnant women are routinely incinerated after being drained of fluids that can ensure Yaskin’s longevity.