Lakshmibai soon digs in her heels against the most one-note, mustache-twirling Brits I’ve seen in a recent Asian period drama. Conflicted leader Hugh Rose (Rupert Everett) tut-tuts and refills the glass of hothead Robert Hamilton (Nathaniel Parker), who keeps barking about how he wants to destroy Lakshmibai and the people of Jhansi (“She will never surrender. She needs to be broken and destroyed!”). Meanwhile, soft-spoken emissary Robert Ellis (Ben Lamb) has a stiff-upper-lip sort of attachment to Lakshmibai, which he almost never expresses, except when he reaches out to grab her as she stumbles during a Sorkin-esque walk-and-talk ramble ("Do not presume to tell me what I can and cannot do,” she yells at him). They sneer and rant at each other, but there’s not much to what they’re saying beyond some tedious sloganeering, like when Ellis insists that Lakshmibai “is more than just a woman: she's an idea. And ideas cannot be captured or owned. She belongs to the people, not the East India Company.” I believe that there’s some truth to that sentiment, but heavy-handed dialogue and wan action scenes don’t make a great case.
Speaking of battle scenes, most of the action in “Warrior Queen” happens across the screen, even during dialogue scenes. The movie’s visual compositions are, in that sense, more ornamental than dynamic. There’s a lot of side-to-side and frame-to-frame movement, but very little of it demands that viewers pay attention to what’s happening within the camera’s frame beyond a point. That lack of perspective can be seen throughout the movie’s major set pieces, including one set at night, when the Brits invade a castle, force the Queen to flee, and well, you’ll see. Or not, given that most of this scene is so poorly lit that it’s hard to get excited about much of what’s shown on-screen.
I also don’t see the comfort that “The Warrior Queen of Jhansi” might be able to provide beyond a basic sort of solidarity, the kind that’s written in toothless, klutzy dialogue like “These events, tragic as they are, will either will either end this mutiny, or be the start of something much larger—a war of independence.” “Warrior Queen” is not the first movie about this subject to be helmed by a woman—“Manikarnika” was co-directed by star Kangana Ranaut—nor does it feature a stand-out performance like those other movies do (Ranaut is very good in “Manikarnika”). So while I suppose you could do worse than “The Warrior Queen of Jhansi,” I know you could do better.
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