‘Akira’ doesn’t quite live up to its hype. It is not a bad film and AR Muragadoss gives you ample of twists and turns to keep you engaged. The action in the film is a little underwhelming though. They seem rehearsed. Sonakshi does a good job as an action heroine. She fights well, acts well and delivers the right emotions. Anurag Kashyap as the antagonist is the show stealer. His act of a corrupt police officer is noteworthy. Where ‘Akira’ fails is in its development as a film. The first half takes time to build up. The relationship between Akira and her family doesn’t have that much impact on us. Then the predictable story and some bad dialogues make ‘Akira’ an average movie. We would recommend ‘Akira’ as a one -time watch, just don’t expect too much out of the film and especially from its action.
About 20 minutes into Sonakshi Sinha's Akira, there's a protest sequence in front of the Asiatic steps in Mumbai. The sequence encompasses all the elements from a college protest - a mob of students, a few hawaldaars, a nostril-flaring sub inspector animatedly yelling into the walkie-talkie about how he needs back, tear gas, stones and finally a gunshot which disperses the crowd. As it disperses, we see Sonakshi Sinha (the hero) still seated in the middle of a now-deserted road. She walks towards the cops in slow-motion with heavily distorted electric guitars blazing in the background. Murugadoss executes that bit to perfection as he packages a Bollywood damsel into an action hero with the help of some smart editing, beautifully choreographed fights, and some brilliant work on the sound design which help the audience feel each bone break and the thump of each kick. The plot is as new as the post-expiry bread lying in your refrigerator for the past month. The best thing about the movie is Anurag Kashyap's act as the corrupt cop. All in all, Akira is a dumb commercial potboiler, with a superlative performance by Anurag Kashyap. Your only wish in the end is Sonakshi find material good enough to do justice to her acting abilities. She badly needs to step away from preset Bollywood templates.
Sonakshi Sinha is an eye-catching action star and director-turned-actor Anurag Kashyap evil incarnate in A R Murugadoss' intriguingly titled Akira. Both pull off their roles with astonishing aplomb. The film as a whole is, however, patchy. Its facile genre sleights - rogue cops, wronged innocents and bloody confrontations - hit home only sporadically. To put all speculation at rest, the film informs the audience right at the outset that Akira is a Sanskrit world that means "graceful strength". It then proceeds to spell out exactly who embodies it. Akira is no breakthrough for women power in Hindi cinema. The heroine is actually only a female version of the swaggering supermen played on the big screen by the likes of Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar. She might be far daintier and slighter built, but there is absolutely nothing that is beyond her. She suffers a lot on account of her courage, but her invincibility is never in doubt. And that robs the film of any real possibility of springing any real surprises. The film certainly has its moments, and Sonakshi does her career no harm by revealing a new facet of herself, but Akira isn't blockbuster material.
Sonakshi Sinha kicks butt in the A R Murugadoss film but is limited by her role. Despite Anurag Kashyap's deliciously bad performance, Akira falls into a sinkhole. Right from the beginning, director A R Murugadoss provides warning signals: a female using her fists cannot go scot-free. She has to be seen suffering, otherwise how will the mass audience flock to the film? So if Akira stands up to acid-throwing bullies, we are meant to rightfully applaud her, but that applause is quickly tempered by her having to be disciplined: first in a remand home and then in a ‘mental’ asylum. And for a female protagonist to be bloody but unbowed, and be the last woman standing? That will take some doing: this watered-down female version Ghajini is not that film.