Amitabh Bachchan’s voice sounds like a boulder rolling down a hill in Kalki 2898 AD, gravelly and immense, anchoring a movie that spends a good forty minutes trying very hard to lose its audience in digital dust. Nag Ashwin directs with the frantic energy of someone who watched Dune twice and then decided to build Mad Max in Hyderabad, which sounds messier than it actually is on screen, though if I'm honest the dialogue mixing in the early action sequences is loud enough to rattle your teeth loose. We are dropped into a bleak, waterless dystopia called Kashi where the elite live in a floating upside-down pyramid known as the Complex, sucking up all the remaining resources while the rest of the populace rots in yellow-tinted slums that look like they were constructed from discarded shipping containers and computer parts. The plot eventually shakes itself awake around an underground fertility lab that is breeding a messiah, or maybe just guarding one, involving Deepika Padukone as a pregnant subject carrying the future of mankind while dodging bounty hunters and holographic bureaucrats. It is a lot to take in, especially during the first act where exposition is shoved down your throat via neon monitors and gruff voiceovers that explain the lore of Mahabharata meeting the year 2898 with all the subtlety of a falling anvil.

Prabhas enters the frame about twenty minutes late as Bhairava, a self-absorbed bounty hunter with an AI car named Bujji that has a better comedic timing than most of the human cast, sporting a leather jacket and a swagger that feels entirely borrowed from his Baahubali days except here he is just chasing credits to buy his ticket up to the floating city. He bounces around the ruins with a cheeky grin, punching people through walls and arguing with his robotic vehicle about fuel costs, providing an obnoxious charm that somehow works against the oppressive gloom of the set design. Disha Patani shows up in a neon-soaked detour in the Complex that feels like an entirely different movie shot by a completely different crew, dancing in metallic gear for about five minutes before vanishing from the narrative entirely like a dropped plot thread. It's a small thing but it bugged me how her character was marketed as a co-lead only to function as a glorified extra with three lines and a costume change, a classic symptom of blockbusters trying to stuff too many recognizable faces onto the poster to appease international distributors.

The real engine of this entire machine is Bachchan as Ashwatthama, the cursed immortal warrior from ancient mythology who has been wandering the earth for six thousand years waiting for a divine birth, and every time he is on screen the CGI budget actually justifies itself because his physical presence is staggering. He moves with a heavy, deliberate grace, fighting entire battalions with a rusted iron staff and stopping bullets with bare palms, bringing a grounded weight to a movie that frequently threatens to float away into a digital void of green-screen nonsense. When he squares off against Prabhas in a junkyard brawl, the camera lingers on the dust settling in their beards and the strain in their shoulders, capturing a kinetic friction that CGI-heavy Hindi films usually miss entirely by cutting away too fast to hide the seams. Djordje Stojiljkovic's cinematography relies heavily on high-contrast golds and deep, bruised blues, creating a visual language that feels distinct from standard Hollywood sci-fi despite pulling from similar visual tropes, though Santhosh Narayanan's score tends to thump away at maximum volume long after the emotional point has already been made by the actors.

Nag Ashwin is clearly fascinated by how mythology can be mechanically retrofitted into a cyberpunk future, merging flying chariots with laser rifles and ancient curses with genetic engineering, and while the world-building is undeniably cluttered, the ambition keeps your eyes glued to the screen through the lulls. There are moments where the narrative stalls out completely to explain the geopolitical layout of the Complex or the religious fanaticism of the Supreme Yaskin, played by an unrecognizable Kamal Haasan under layers of prosthetics that make him look like a melting candle, but the sheer scale of the practical and digital sets prevents the movie from feeling small. The tonal shifts are jarring, swinging wildly from slapstick comedy involving Prabhas and his talking car to grim, bloody violence where guards are impaled on spikes with zero hesitation, reminding you that commercial Indian cinema has never really cared about maintaining a single emotional register for three hours.

As the story grinds toward its massive, sprawling climax, the stakes expand from a simple bounty hunt to a global cataclysm, bringing in armies of genetically modified supersoldiers and flying vessels that tear through the skies of Kashi in a display of destruction that rivals anything coming out of Hollywood right now. It gets exhausting, honestly, watching yet another glowing blue laser beam shoot into the clouds to signal the final boss fight, but the sheer audacity of the mythology-sci-fi mashup carries it past the finish line. Prabhas sheds his comedic persona just in time to deliver some genuinely thrilling action beats, and the final setup for the inevitable sequel feels earned rather than desperate, leaving you wondering how they plan to top a six-thousand-year-old immortal trading punches with futuristic warlords in a dying world.