User Reviews

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Meenakshi Seshadri plays a motherly character to Raveena Tandon, and is kinda mother-in-law to Sunny Deol's character - her lead in at least five films.

When Meenakshi's character dies while saving Sunny's character the latter has a wooden and expressionless face, zero emotion and leaves the scene with immediate effect. Absolutely no reaction to a person's death, let alone one who dies saving his life.

The scene sums up everything that is wrong with Kshatriya. It is wooden, expressionless, sans emotion and totally pointless.

If assembling a constellation of stars tantamounts to making a movie then JP Dutta has done a good job.

However, if film making is about a good story, etching out each character perfectly and extracting good performances then Kshatriya is JP Dutta's weakest film in his prime. Mind you he has directed quite a few forgettable films in his twilight years, the turn of the millennium that is.

Irrespective of its box office fate Kshatriya was a poor film in every aspect.

Dutta had given Sanjay Dutt a good role in Hathyar (1989), a well-intentioned, well-executed and critically acclaimed movie that failed at the box office.

However, in Kshatriya Dutta cast Dutt just to bolster the film's star appeal. Dutt was the No.1 star of the time, with major hits like Thanedaar, Saajan and Sadak. Even some of his weaker films like Ilaaka, Fateh, Tejaa, Khatarnaak and Adharm had made money. Dutta exploited this star status to the hilt, while playing the favorite's card and giving the plum role to Sunny. Nothing wrong with playing favorites but a director has to write it in a manner to suit his fav hero. When it comes acting to Sunny he is a limited performer, only convincing with one emotion - anger.

Give him comedy, dance, drama or romance and his limitations as an actor is clearly visible. Add to that his fake, perennially constipated and extremely irritating smile, and it becomes intolerable cruelty. Being uncomfortable while dancing or romancing can be attributed to shyness but how does one explain a person who doesn't have an honest smile? If one is not comfortable in front of camera he may as well choose a different profession.

Kshatriya seems more like a nautanki with bhaands than a movie with actors. Not one actor is convincing. And there are at least 25 of them.

The fact that Dutt looks disinterested during the bulk parts of the movie owes to two factors, 1. He was clearly not happy with his role 2. The fact that he found it difficult to accept that someone had yet again taken advantage of his lack of seriousness about his own career, a fact that is explained in his biopic Sanju (2018). That Dutt signed every second film offered to him hindered the growth of his career at every stage. It is only while working in the movie that Dutt would realize he is not enjoying working in the film, and it is too late to get out.

A decade later Dutta would exploit Dutt again in LoC: Kargil, giving better roles to Ajay Devgn, Abhishek Bachchan, Akshaye Khanna and even Saif Ali Khan, even as Dutt remained a space filler.

In fact the director had planned to cast Dutt in Jackie Shroff's role in Border (1997). How good or lengthy that role was, anyone who has seen the film knows.

JP Dutta dislikes the movie himself!

However, with the exception of some corny scenes in London, this move is as good and Epic you can get from Bollywood.

The problem with this film is JP was lured into implementing commercial aspects instead of his usual authenticity into this film. Maybe he was trying to win over the mass after their failure of his earlier films.

Despite this, the movie is still visually stunning. The action is probably the best ever seen in Bollywood alongside Sholay. The performances are good as in all Dutta films.

An Epic of Indian Cinema.