First things first. The season of froth and fun is over for Dharma Production. If last year’s Jigra was a wakeup call, Kesari Chapter 2: The Untold Story Of Jallianwala Bagh is a full-on war cry, a clarion call for Karan Johar’s illustrious production house to wake and smell the coffee, filtered of course.
Akshay Kumar plays the South Indian C Sankar Nair, a lawyer who took on the ire of Dyer without a thought of a ceasefire.
The teaser teases us with thirty seconds of no visuals, just chilling sounds of gunshots and the public crying in pain. This radio-city treatment of the violence that shook—and ultimately snuffed—the British empire is deeply efficacious, bringing to the narrative a two-pronged impact: of sparing the audience the enormity of the violence that was unleashed at Jallianwala Bagh and also reminding us how cinematic sound can be.
After 30 seconds, Akshay Kumar makes his grand appearance as the adamant lawyer who had the balls to tell the gora-log to f..k off, even if it means losing his job, limb, and life.
Akshay has always enjoyed playing the nation’s saviour. Here, he has history to back his long-legged ambitions. Luckily for him and us, Kesari: Chapter 2 doesn’t look like a cut-and-dry fact-based chronicle. There is colour and valour, sound and fury, saffron and national pride, all mingled into what promises to be a tour de force.
Karan Johar teams up with Akshay Kumar for what promises to be the most explosive historical of 2025. Akshay, in one of his most challenging roles since Airlift, plays A Shankaran Nair, who famously took on the British empire in a case against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Akshay plays a senior and highly respected lawyer, while Ananya Pandey (who had a career-changing 2024) plays his protegee. The film is most likely to revive audiences’ interest in bio-pics. Yes, it has turned out THAT well. Karan Singh Tyagi of Bandish Bandits directs.
