Ram Setu Movie Review: Akshay Kumar starrer has ample action and adventure but suffers from mediocre storyline

Ram Setu Movie Review: There is no doubt that Akshay Kumar is dabbling in various genres and pushing himself as a performer. This year alone he has done an action comedy (Bachchhan Paandey), a historical (Samrat Prithviraj), a family drama (Raksha Bandhan), and a crime thriller (Cuttputlli). With Ram Setu, he shows interest in a different theme, an action-adventure drama with cultural and religious leanings. However, like all his releases this year, Ram Setu is average at best. The concept may seem exciting on paper but the execution is pretty dull making it a yawn-inducing time at the movies. To call it children's version of Indiana Jones would not be far-fetched. The intent is similar but the direction is weak and Akshay's performance does not do any good to the drama where stakes are very low and the story proceeds down an expected path.

Akshay plays Aryan Kulshreshtha, an archeologist who ruffles feathers by calling Valmiki's Ramayana a text with no historical authority. He must prove his claim while he and his family are made an outcast by the 'believer' society. The narrative is ordinary and proceeds without posing many challenges to the protagonist. Thus, the interest wanes down in the first half itself. In the second half, it becomes a slog fest. Predictability is the storyline's biggest challenge and no efforts are made to do away with it.

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The characters, while on a mission to unravel the truth about the existence of Lord Ram, keep chancing upon one bizarre clue after another and continue to mindlessly follow them since they don't know any better. Stuck in this routine, Ram Setu becomes unintentionally humourous. It would have been more convincing if the characters' backgrounds were established better or the path to mystery solving strewn with challenges. 

As for the performance, Akshay Kumar does not bring any novelty to his character. In some scenes, he even tries to do slapstick and has seemingly improvised the dialogues. This does not help the film in any manner, breaks the mood instead and distracts. When the viewer tries to invest in the expedition, the expository dialogues create a diversion. It is almost as if director Abhishek Sharma decided to go with the flow, and not in a good way.

Another major flaw in the production is CGI. In some places where actual locations are not used for filming, the shoddy green screen replacement stands out like a sore thumb. The movie was shot during Covid restrictions but that should not be an excuse for bad production design or lack of extras in scenes. Tonality keeps shifting and music from Ajay-Atul is to be blamed. At times loud and out of place overall, the background score is one of Ram Setu's biggest flaws. 

Satya Dev as AP has a decent enough role apart from Akshay Kumar. When he joins the crew on their expedition to unravel the truth, the film shows some potential but it was never meant to be one person's job. In fact, Satya Dev's character gives the film its biggest strength, the climax. However, Ram Setu is too weary of a film to sit through for 2 minutes of an interesting ending.

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