Unquestionably, there’s plenty of enjoyment to be had, and the film, reportedly costing around $17 million, has earned a respectable if not outstanding $6 million on its Aug. 12 opening weekend at home, bolstered by an impressive three-day haul of nearly $750, 000 in the States. With this star-director-composer combo, it was bound to succeed, yet the prosaic script feels far too derivative, and only the impressive rain-lashed finale succeeds in delivering that tingly thrill one expects from historical action epics.
Gowariker, still best known internationally for his Oscar-nominated “Lagaan, ” is a clever man, and he certainly meant for audiences to chuckle at the opening, when characters are purportedly speaking ancient Sindhi before magically morphing into modern Hindi. In the first production number, “Mohenjo Mohenjo, ” when extras, according to subtitles, sing in ancient Dilmun and Bukharan and Sumerian, surely we’re all meant to smile, knowing these extinct languages are impossible to recreate.