Akshay Kumar plays a star archaeologist and apparently part-time superhero, Dr Aryan Kulshrestha, who makes two groundbreaking discoveries in Afghanistan within a span of 15 minutes. These discoveries then go on to have no effect to the rest of the plot except to solidify Aryan’s stature in the field.
Dr Aryan is then tasked with investigating the origin of the Ram Setu – is the structure manmade or natural? The film’s first half is bearable as an Indiana Jones crossover with Big Hero 6 (courtesy the Pillsbury Doughboy suit) and almost hooks you in.
Akshay plays his role with conviction, making his bravado believable when unconvincing VFX doesn’t overshadow it. Nushrratt Bharuccha plays the role of Aryan’s wife Professor Gayatri, but her respectable profession doesn’t translate to any weight in her role.
Jacqueline Fernandez, an actor who hails from Sri Lanka, plays Dr Sandra, a woman from Goa, on an expedition in Sri Lanka with Dr Aryan.
Every character around Dr Aryan is a catalyst, if they’re lucky, and must rely on Kumar to have all the epiphanies. The female characters are given what seem to be important roles in the film, but eventually still end up with sexist tropes.
Ram Setu, directed by Abhishek Sharma, is pure fiction, borrowing a lot of its information from Pushkar Bhatnagar’s book ‘Dating the Era of Lord Rama’ (a disclaimer that is written in barely visible text during a very high-stakes scene).
Following the rules of most fictional work, if you suspend belief and truly immerse yourself in the storytelling, you can almost feel yourself invested in finding out how the story unfolds, especially since the film starts out by making commentary about religious fanaticism and the debate between science and faith.
A team that rambles on and on about scientific evidence randomly switches off that part of their brain to embark on an adventure to prove that the Ram Setu is in fact, manmade…thus proving the existence of Lord Ram.
The screenplay and dialogues, credited to Chandra Prakash Dwivedi and Abhishek Sharma do not add much to the film. The screenplay is built to present the hero with one convenience after the other. The film expects the viewer to believe that Dr Aryan and his team constantly discover things because of how ingenious they are when their discoveries are actually quite obvious – so how has no archaeologist or explorer before them come across these locations?
The dialogues also frequently tell the audience exactly what is unfolding on screen, almost like one has stepped into a re-run of CID.
The film that started out with a conversation surrounding religious fanaticism ended with an emotionally charged monologue in a court with little to no scientific or legal evidence. The Ram Setu is somehow linked to a woman’s modesty with men being touted as saviours (literally). Dr Aryan walks out to a mob waving saffron flags and chanting ‘Jai Shree Ram’ to celebrate his victory. Not much is left to imagination.
Having watched a film like Kantara that takes mythology and creates magic on screen, Ram Setu disappoints primarily because of how shoddy the script and its treatment is. The lore in epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata is extensive and have potential for many interesting arcs and side-arcs but Ram Setu is not it.
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