I wasn’t the biggest fan of Bajirao Mastani and Padmaavat back when they divided audiences, but I miss them now. A decade ago, the prospect of a lavishly mounted period drama about an iconic Indian warrior or king felt loaded with possibility. These much-revered figures could be accessed through the human dimensions of their personality — and I like that genre specialist Sanjay Leela Bhansali often used love and romantic tragedy as his medium. These days, they can be accessed (if at all) from a space of love too: but only if this love is a form of nationalism. Nothing less than reverence — slow-mo praises, spotless courage and heroism — will do. As a result, most releases arrive with an air of caution and compliance. Reviewing the storyline, its inaccuracies and omissions can be akin to reviewing the country. Raja Shivaji is the latest critic-proof spectacle in this series.
In other words, it’s no longer possible to tell a devotional film from a historical one. So I’m going to be careful with the terms. Based on the life of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, Riteish Deshmukh’s film stars himself in and as the fabled founder of the Maratha empire. It traces his journey from divine birth to his definitive conquest of the Deccan Sultanate of Bijapur: all in the name of Hindavi Swarajya. His nemesis here is the barbaric (can there be any other adjective?) general of the Muslim Adil Shahi Dynasty, Afzal Khan (Sanjay Dutt). Khan is the epitome of evil of course, and he is responsible for the kind of targeted cultural atrocities that force the average viewer in 2026 to conflate independence (from all invaders) with victimhood and revenge. To say that this is a simplified account of the conflict between storied dynasties is an understatement, but that’s the nature of the beast. In the long buildup to the anticlimactic face-off between Khan and a rampaging Shivaji Raje Bhonsle, plenty of impure Mughal blood and pure Maratha blood is spilled. Shivaji loses family members on the way, but personal relationships are established through songs and montages, so the loss rarely registers beyond a scene.
Raja Shivaji almost accomplishes what it sets out to do. Make of that what you will. I say “almost” because, at a technical level, it is not the strongest version of itself. In terms of its shared universe, it doesn’t have the frenzied volume of Chhaava or the visual swag of Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior.
Surprisingly, Santosh Sivan’s cinematography leaves much to be desired. There are a handful of striking images, but there’s an artifice that’s hard to ignore. The computer-generated imagery and backgrounds (an unfinished Taj Mahal looks like a screensaver behind Shah Jahan) are at odds with the elaborate staging and movement of the camera; you can tell that some shots are stitched together mid-dialogue, with dissolves that aren’t quick enough to escape the naked eye. There are a few aggressive elephants in the mix, too, but they pale in comparison to a Salman Khan cameo that’s destined to generate some controversy.
One of the problems is that Deshmukh isn’t a formidable-enough presence as the impenetrable ruler; Ajay Atul’s soundtrack works overtime to offset this and manufacture an aura out of thin (but unpolluted) air. It’s a genre staple, though, where the villains are always more colourful and scene-chewing than the sinless heroes. But Sanjay Dutt is no Ranveer Singh or Saif Ali Khan here; he extends his broad-strokes Dhurandhar turn as Afzal Khan, a baddie who’s somehow as sauceless and predictable as a goodie. As a director, Deshmukh shows more of a feel for the non-scale, non-action sequences. There aren’t many that don’t have Swarajya monologues, but the moment where a tearful Shivaji returns to tell his mother (Bhagyashree) about his brother’s (Abhishek Bachchan) death stands out for his conviction in the melodrama. The reason it works is also because of Bachchan’s gravitas as the martyr who paves the way for Shivaji’s rage.
Of the action sequences, the only semi-remarkable one features Shivaji attacking a Maratha traitor for being a Mughal patron. “Swarajya is about loyalty, not slavery,” he declares, in a film that belongs to an era where the lines between the two are blurred. There’s a running gag of an ailing Adil Shahi (Amole Gupte) and a judgmental queen (Vidya Balan) who keeps taunting him for being weak; their track is the closest to the film’s cartoon-coded tone. Without the film’s obvious context, it’s fun to see Balan hamming it up in her reaction shots. There’s also a glimpse of an authorial voice in how a pre-teen Shivaji sees his parents less as royals and more as tired employees who keep getting transferred from one ruler to the next. In a parallel universe, one can imagine the origin story of a boy who is sick of the salaried-job ecosystem, and gets inspired to start his own company. That’s the spiritual narrative of every successful king; cultural entrepreneurship becomes the cornerstone of their rule.
Even as I was reflecting on this passage during the film, I heard an exaggerated shush from an elderly gentleman sitting a few rows behind. We were only 155 minutes in, but he seemed to be displeased with the chatter of a few excited viewers seated next to him. His reaction, however, says everything about the modern historical drama. It wasn’t a brisk “keep quiet” or a more common “can you please stop talking, boss?”. At least twice he repeated: “Show some respect”. That last word echoed through the hall. It’s an order otherwise reserved for those who don’t stand for the pre-movie national anthem. Who’s to tell the difference?