About 20 minutes into Mohenjo Daro, I was surprised at how engrossed I was in the proceedings.
While the trailer for Ashutosh Gowariker's latest period epic, set in the year 2016 BC, had left me( and most people, frankly) unimpressed, I was quite okay with the way its first act was shaping up. Young, handsome, and impossibly chiseled Sarman( Hrithik Roshan) is an orphan who lives with his uncle and aunt in a farming village called Amri, part of modern-day Sindh, but has recurring dreams about the famed city of Mohenjo Daro, where he yearns to go.
An indigo farmer by profession, Sarman somehow has the arms of a warrior( he's introduced in the movie bicep-first, in fact) and demonstrates this right in the beginning, when he wrestles a crocodile and emerges victorious.
Mohenjo Daro on the whole is a lot like this opening set-piece: not very well executed, fatally intent on establishing Roshan as a hero who can do no wrong; but yet, weirdly enough, somewhat effective. Despite a respectable budget at its disposal, it often falters in the special effects department, but Sanjoy Karole's production design, which includes massive structures and props, helps put things back on track.
A disclaimer at the beginning absolves this film of its need to be entirely historically accurate, which gives Gowariker the license to spin a familiar poor-village-boy-meets-privileged-city-girl yarn. So far, so contrived. But as the film hurtles towards its inevitable mother of all set-pieces( There Will Be Flood; heh), the story touches upon multiple themes, ranging from how greed for money and the environment are connected to the virtue of serving citizens as opposed to ruling over them.
