Mohenjo Daro is Hrithik Roshan's second collaboration with his Jodhaa Akbar director Ashutosh Gowariker. Here's our review.

Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Pooja Hegde, Kabir Bedi, Arunoday Singh

Direction: Ashutosh Gowariker

Ratings: (2/5)

Ashutosh Gowariker cannot, overnight, become a bad filmmaker. This man has given two blockbusters in the last decade - Lagaan and Jodhaa Akbar - both steeped in Indian history and containing Hindi cinema's most popular narrative devices. And both were such big hits, thanks to the way Gowariker handled them. So why did Mohenjo Daro get the bad pre-release rap?



That's because it's 2016, where the online world of information is accessible to the Indian youth, more than ever before, and in a world where these people have the outlet to voice their opinion on the internet, where anything and everything can go viral, Gowariker's Mohenjo Daro doesn't quite cut it. Gowariker took huge liberties with the historical details of the period, understandably, in the service of a grand, commercial film that would appeal to one and all, but in the process, ended up making something that just cannot be taken seriously.

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Before going any further, Mohenjo Daro is the story of an indigo farmer Sarman (Hrithik Roshan) who travels to the fabled land of Mohenjo Daro for better business opportunities, only to fall in love with Chaani (Pooja Hegde). Chaani is set to marry the son of the city's despotic ruler Maham (Kabir Bedi). And the tale unfolds...



Mohenjo Daro, a Sindhi word that literally means 'Mound of the Dead', was not a name that the-then inhabitants of the 5000-year old civilisation used to call the city. That the people in the film keep referring to the place as Mohenjo Daro is not the point; it is one of the many known factual fallacies of the film. The problem is the strange narrative - Mohenjo Daro, in the film, happens to be a city going through recession because agricultural produce is at an all-time low as a result of Maham's decision to build a dam across river Sindh to mine all the gold underneath because he is greedy, evil and adequately one-dimensional and stupid for a filmy villain. If anyone speaks against Maham, he is killed in public view, and then their bodies are not allowed to be cremated. All in all, the ruling class is hated in the city. Despite all of that, for some reason, people of the city gather for a celebration of their city as a tribute to, supposedly, Maham, which is the song Mohenjo Mohenjo.

Here are people, who are shown to be distressed under a dictatorship, coming together to literally chant "Mound, mound". As such, it is impossible to cut this film any slack after a point.

For exposition's sake, Mohenjo Daro's characters explain basic plot points with absurd dialogue. When Sarman and his friend walks into the royal township within the city because Sarman has to check out Chaani, the friend exclaims, "Lag raha hai ki hum dusre nagar mein hain." Well, duh.

In another part, a few excited townsfolk are seen running towards 'something' and they stop and tell Sarman, "Lag raha hai phir se koi ghatana ghati hai." Gowariker's simplistic and heavy-handed treatment of the film, is frankly, a dumbing down of the filmmaking style we saw in his seminal film Lagaan. It's as if he is a bit scared and cautious after two back-to-back box office bombs (What's Your Rashee and Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Se) and he needed something saleable, but simple, to get his Mohenjo... err, Mojo back on.

On top of that, Ashutosh weaving his literal interpretation of historical artifacts into the story is, well, forced. Sarman keeps seeing a unicorn (which looked like a one-horned calf, perhaps, that was the CGI team's best effort to get anything close to the unicorn of the square seal) in his dream. In the song Tu Hai, Chaani wearing her headdress immerses a figurine of the Mohenjo Daro's mother goddess (shown in close up), whose headdress is the obvious inspiration for Chaani's.

Such forced "Did you spot it?" moments are not really Easter eggs, Mr Gowariker.

But then, will the casual audience get into such nitpicking? Probably not, probably yes, who knows. Is the film engaging and entertaining at least? Mohenjo Daro is nothing you have not seen before. It is the same old hero-making tale where one man rises to become the leader by fighting the despot; the fight between Sarman and the giant men in the ring echoes Gladiator while the entire story echoes Gangs of New York or Baahubali's Return-Of-The-Chosen-One-To-Kingdom-For-Baap-Ka-Badla narrative. Gowariker simply adds the 'historic film' tadka to package and sell it because on paper, the idea is great. Also, because he probably thinks he has a way with historical films. What we could have had was a better film, but that would have required different cinematic sensibilities.

Ashutosh Gowariker does not make historical films, let's get that clear. He is great at making spectacles using historical stories as a crutch. Sadly, this time, he picked the wrong story.