Peter Bradshaw 

Eklavya – The Royal Guard

Peter Bradshaw: Robustly unassuming and entertaining Bollywood melodrama.
  
  

Eklavya
Shakespearean silliness ... Eklavya Photograph: PR

Here's a robustly unassuming and entertaining Bollywood melodrama starring Amitabh Bachchan and Sanjay Dutt, set in a romanticised contemporary Rajasthan. It begins with a quotation from Shakespeare - thus underlining an interestingly persistent resemblance between the contemporary Bollywood genre and idioms of popular English drama from Shakespeare's day: kings, queens, fantasy, intrigue and romance.

Bachchan plays the decent, loyal manservant and royal guard to one of the Ruritanian "kings" of modern Rajasthan; he stumbles upon court plotting and soap opera-ish parentage secrets; there are terrible truths to uncover and revenges to carry out. It's all wildly silly, and yet director Vidhu Vinod Chopra puts it over with some panache.

 

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