MOHENJO-DARO,mound of the dead, hill of mohan, there are different meanings to this name. Although the original name is yet to be deciphered,an ancient seal of Mohenjo daro suggests its dravidian name to be  Kukkutarma (city of cockerel).

In 2001, Ashutosh Gowariker established himself as one of India’s leading filmmakers with “Lagaan”. Later in 2008, he raised his bar up a notch with the epic love story of Jodha Akbar, which had  almost Bhansali-ish lavishness too. Now, Mohenjo daro brought back the same trio of Ashutosh,A R Rehman and Hritik together . If it was not for Hritik’s greek god image and his screen magnificence, it would have been even more tiring to sit through this almost 2hr 45 min long movie.

I am not completely ridiculing Ashutosh Gowariker’s passion for historical fiction but the movie was more of a love story and less of a story of the lost city of Mohenjo-daro. I agree that not much has been told by the handful of archeologists who had done their research on the excavated site from 1922 to 1964, but thats where the word fiction in the genre name, historical fiction, need to be taken advantage of by the story writer, who is none other than Ashutosh himself.

Gowariker took almost three years to work on his script ,to ensure the authenticity of the look and feel of the city, people, their attire and their language . The city plan with the rectilinear houses, the language, the simple dressing was all presented very well. Felt almost real, except the leading lady Pooja Hegde, debutant actress, had to wear rich, bright, out of place-clothes, for some incomprehensible reason,when even the wife of Maham is shown in simple clothes. She is believed to be a special girl who will bring a new sun to the city, which I assumed to be some good luck or change of fate to the city and is also to be married to the prince-of-sorts of the city. It still doesn't make sense to dress her up in imported fabric in an era of hand-made pottery .

The movie opens with Hritik and his buddies,youth of the village of Amri in 2016 B.C, hunting for a man-eating crocodile in a narrow river. Hritik, being the Protagonist of the story, kills the crocodile very bravely. No prizes for guessing that!! And so, he is considered to be a hero of the village, whom all the young girls of the village are shown eyeing, but he,though enjoys the attention, seems to believe that his soulmate is somewhere outside in a different world. Haven't we all been there once sometime or the other!! Well, he also seems to be haunted by a beautiful white unicorn from a far off place, in his dreams. He is a curious young guy who wants to go explore the outside world and first on his list is the magnificent city of Mohenjo daro. But his aunt and uncle, who are like his second-parents, don't seem to be happy with that thought for some reason, which reminds me of Bahubali. But there ends the similarity between the two films, or so do we think. Coz, its the same old story. He has to go fight a bad guy and take back his kingdom . Still, I would hate to compare this movie to THE Bahubali. 

Sarman(Hritik) finally leaves for Mohenjo-daro,on business, and falls in love with a high-society girl Chaani (Pooja Hegde). He also starts a revolution-of-sorts against Maham, played by Kabir Bedi. Gowariker took two long hours just to tell these two lines of his story. The rest of the story and also the comparatively important part ,took him just about 30 to 40 minutes. 

Speaking of Kabir Bedi, I feel his appearance and his voice alone does more than half of the job of portraying him as a bad guy. He need not really put much effort into acting. Having said that, yes he is also a natural actor.

The Great Bath discovered in the excavations was also shown in the film as a modern swimming pool in one scene where, Chaani(Pooja) has to place the idol of maa River Sindhu,who was the one and only Goddess they prayed to, at the bottom of the pool. Coming to the final part of the story, you gotto see sarman’s trick with building a bridge of boats over the river flow to save the people of the city, on the big screen for yourself. I don't wanna ruin that image for you, by putting it in mere words.

I am sorry, I didn't mention Arunoday singh, who plays the spoilt brat of the Maham, coz theres nothing really to mention about his role. Hrithik was amazing as usual and Pooja did a good job of looking good. Music is another high point of the movie and a relief to the audience to get through the movie.