Brahmastra Review: Ayan Mukerji Astra fails miserably

Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt starrer Brahmastra​​​​is out in the theatres. The Ayan Mukerji directorial has been in the making for over five years and has faced several delays due to the pandemic. However upon its release the movie has failed to leave up to the hype. The story of a man discovering his own superpowers. Shiva (Ranbir Kapoor) is a DJ, based in Mumbai, and lives a carefree life. He's an orphan; he lives with orphan kids and dotes on them. He comes across Isha (Alia Bhatt)and falls for her instantly. She, too, gets attracted to him, especially while learning about his way of life. All is going well when suddenly Shiva starts getting flashes. He sees the evil Junoon (Mouni Roy) killing a scientist, Mohan Bhargav (Shah Rukh Khan) and snatching a rare artefact from him. Before dying, Mohan blurts out under pressure that the other part of the artefact is with an artist named Anish Shetty (Nagarjuna), who stays in Varanasi. Shiva sees all of this and realizes that Junoon is all set to target Anish next. Shiva decides to head to Varanasi to warn Anish of the impending danger. Isha, too, joins him. In Varanasi, Shiva and Isha rescue Anish at the nick of time. Thanks to Anish, they find out that the artefact stolen from Mohan is a part of ‘Brahmastra’. There are two more parts of it and Anish has one part. He hands it over to Shiva and Isha and asks them to go to the ashram of Guru (Amitabh Bachchan) while he tries to stop Junoon. Anish sacrifices his life and when Shiva is confronted by Junoon’s goon, he, unknowingly, destroys him using his fire power. What happens next forms the rest of the film.

Brahmastra also tries hard to present itself as the revelation of deeper truths of humankind but doesn’t exactly get there where it wanted to be. All said and done, Brahmastra is a colloquial disappointment which fails to impress. Hussain Dalal’s dialogues (at times) doesn’t match. Amitabh Bachchan as Guru doesn’t have much to do apart from unlocking Shiva’s potential. He might have an important role in the backstory of these characters which could unfold further, but as of now he just added some extra depth to the storyline. All said and done Brahmastra is just not  worth the hype that can revive Bollywood from its current mess.