Hari Srinivasan

Insipid, dishonest and unhistoric. The fierce Queen of Jhansi deserves better people to portray her and make a movie about her. This movie perpetuates Euro-centric lies and ignorance of Indian history. Devika Bhise ruined the Ramanujan movie, and now she ruins this. She is now the female version of the caricature disgrace that Dev Patel is. Hollywood work harder on your casting - Stop casting Dev Patel and Devika Bhise to play every role from the diverse and ancient land of a billion human beings. They don't look or act real. They don't have the cultural context which can be overcome if they were humble and intelligent enough to care to do the research. But unfortunately both these dolts don't, and as a result they keep ruining movies about important and great historic Indians time and again. Too many opportunities to inspire Indians and the world with great stories ruined because of these kind of lazy actors and script writers. These kind of lazy portrayals do more harm than good in bringing awareness.

The one star is for Maniratnam's ignorance of the Sanskrit language and cultural context - particularly his use of Shivoham as a war cry. It's akin to having soldiers marching to Vaishnava janato as a war chant. A little bit of research would have helped MBA educated Maniratnam, but his ignorance resulted in some jarring scenes featuring Madurantakan. Also, Kalki's story is pretty illogical - Mandakini is a highly impossible character. I think he rode the bandwagon of the interest in epigraphic discoveries of the Great Chozhas and weaved together a bizarre plot with Mandakini - what was the post independence generation of India thinking to make this such a hyped epic! incredible! The silver lining is that this does make people curious about the Cholas and the great temples of Thanjavur.