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 havaldars, a nostril-flaring sub-inspector animatedly yelling into the walkie-talkie about how he needs tear gas, stones, and finally a gunshot that disperses the crowd. As the crowd is dispersed, 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.
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That one scene captures how director A R Murugadoss celebrates the Bollywood masala maad-dhaad brand of movies and revels in them. Belonging to Kollywood mainly, his films have never been known to tax the brains too much. He titles Akira after one of the most acclaimed directors to have walked the face of the earth, Akira Kurosawa, whose films were widely appreciated for their subtlety. Only if Murugadoss had learned the art of subtlety from Kurosawa before naming his movie on him!
Akira is anything but deft with its references. A Christ crucifying reference is communicated with a close-up of the Cross for the longest 15 seconds in the history of time, and then a character is made to mouth the words, She sacrificed herself. Whaaaat? You don’t say!