April 5, 2025
by Carla Hay
Hindi with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in the Indian cities of Rajkot and Mumbai, the action film “Sikandar” features an all-Asian group of people representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A rich vigilante is targeted for revenge by a wealthy politician while the vigilante travels around Mumbai to meet he people who received organ donations from the vigilante’s deceased wife.
Culture Audience: “Sikandar” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and don’t mind watching overly long and stupid action movies.
The horrible action movie “Sikandar” can’t decide if it wants to be a revenge rampage flick or a feel-good drama about organ donations. Everything about this atrociously acted and long-winded abomination is obnoxiously stupid. This is the type of junkpile film that doesn’t even try to have a good story, while the over-the-top action scenes are actually quite boring in their lack of imagination.
Written and directed by A. R. Murugadoss, “Sikandar” is a 135-minute jumble of incoherence in what this movie is trying to convey. The movie (which takes place mostly in the Indian cities of Rajkot and Mumbai) has an identity that is just a confused as the movie’s characters who have multiple names. The “hero” of the story is Sanjay “Sikandar” Rajkot (played by Salman Khan), also known as the King of Rajkot, who is described as “a king with vast empires.”
Sikandar lives in an opulent mansion with his wife Saisri Rajkot (played by Rashmika Mandanna), also known as Rani Saidha, who is a painter artist. “Sikandar” wastes some time on shallow flashback scenes of what the relationship between Sikandar and Saisri was like before they got married. Expect to see multiple scenes of Sikandar and Saisri on courtship dates where they have mindless conversations as they flirt with each other.
Saisri is a loving and devoted wife, but she is frustrated that Sikandar is a workaholic who often seems preoccupied by things he won’t discuss with her. Sikandar isn’t actually seen doing working at a real job. The movie just shows him as a wealthy guy who likes to go around assaulting people whom he thinks deserves to be assaulted.
Saisri says to Sikandar that he has given her everything but his time. There are plenty of scenes of Sikandar spending time with Saisri. Sometimes he pays attention to her in a loving way, and other times his mind seems to be somewhere else. Another strain in their marriage is that Saisri hasn’t been able to get pregnant for years.
“Sikandar” begins with a bizarre and ridiculous scene taking place on an airplane that’s in flight. A woman named Monica (played by Neha Iyer) is traveling with her son Dhruvit (played by Dhruvit Pethadia), who’s about 6 or 7 years old. The plane doesn’t seem to have many passengers, so Dhruvit is able to sit in an empty seat across the aisle from Monica.
A creep named Arjun Pradhan (played by Prateik Smita Patil, also known as Prateik Babbar) suddenly sits down next to Monica and shows her a porn video that she made years ago when she was a porn actress, before she was married. Monica’s husband doesn’t know about her porn past. Arjun says he will show the video to Dhruvik if Monica doesn’t let Arjun have his way sexually with her, right then and there.
Arjun points to two of his bodyguards who are seated nearby and warns Monica not to say or do anything, or else his bodyguards will hurt her. A terrified Monica lets Arjun cover himself and Monica with a blanket. Just as Arjun is about to sexually assault her, Sikandar bursts into this part of the plane, gets into fight with Arjun and the bodyguards, and easily defeats them.
This fight scene is badly staged. Sikandar just came from another section in the plane. How did he see what was happening and know when to start attacking these criminals? Don’t expect an answer to that question. And during his entire bloody and violent fight, the airplane employees are nowhere to be seen until after Sikandar defeats these criminals.
Arjun and his cronies are arrested, which is a humiliating scandal because Arjun comes from a prominent family. He is the only child of Minister Rakesh Pradhan (played by Sathyaraj), who vows to get revenge on Sikandar. Rakesh bribes the corrupt Inspector Prakash (played by Kishore Kumar G.) to have police go to Sikandar’s mansion to arrest Sikandar.
When the police get there, Saisri tells them that Sikandar has left to turn himself in at the police station because he heard he was going to be arrested. It makes absolutely no sense, but that’s an example of how bad this movie is. And the movie gets worse as it continues on a downward spiral of idiocy.
Sikandar is very popular with the “common people” because he’s a charitable royal, so a mob of people gather outside his mansion to protest against the police who were there to arrest Sikandar. The mob goes as far as committing vandalism on the police cars parked outside. Rakesh wants to ends this civil unrest because it will affect his chances of getting re-elected, so he reluctantly lets Sikandar get released from police custody and says that Sikandar was “saved by the mob.”
The feud is reignited when Arjun is at his lavish birthday party and he finds out that an unknown person videorecorded his attempted sexual assault of Monica and uploaded the video on the Internet, when the video goes viral. To add to the shaming, someone has arranged for the video to be played on one of the giant video screens at the party. An enraged Arjun thinks Sikandar is behind this leaked video and vows to get revenge.
“Sikandar” then goes off on an entirely different tangent when Saisri gets killed in an explosion. She was an organ donor, so about half of the movie consists of Sikandar tracking down three people in Mumbai who received some of her organs. An orphaned pre-teen boy named Kamaruddin, also known as Kamar (played by Ayan Khan), received Saisri’s lungs because Kamar was the victim of environmental pollution. A vadam shop owner named Vaidehi Ranga (played Kajal Aggarwal) received Saisri’s eyes. A lovelorn woman named Nish (played by Anjini Dhawan) received Saisri’s heart.
Sikandar does what can only be called a “do-gooder” tour, where he becomes saintly person as he goes to Mumbai. He is chauffeured by a taxi driver who calls himself De Niro(played by Jatin Sarna), who tells unfunny jokes about “Taxi Driver,” the 1976 movie starring Robert De Niro. These “jokes” include insufferable impersonations of De Niro’s “Taxi Driver” character Travis Bickle.
During this “do-gooder” part of the movie, Sikandar battles environmental pollution caused by “real-estate shark” businessman Virat Bakshi (played by Nawab Shah); fights against sexism because Vaidehi’s father-in-law doesn’t believe that women should work in business; and becomes a crusader against domestic violence when he finds out that Nisha was in abusive relationship with her ex-boyfriend Kapil (played by Ayaan Lall), who dumped Nisha to marry another woman. The storyline about Arjun and his father Rakesh gets shoved to the side and then comes crashing back with predictable results.
Adding to the cringeworthy aspects of the movie are the movie’s bombastic song-and-dance numbers, where Salman Khan uncomfortably does the choreography, and the songs are utterly forgettable. “Sikandar” is also one of those terrible movies where the sound mixing of the music score is turned up to detestably high levels. Note to filmmakers: Having music that’s too loud in a movie won’t improve the movie. It makes the movie worse.
“Sikandar” has plenty of fight scenes, but none look believable, including the very fake-looking visual effects. Some of the fight scenes are absolutely nonsensical. For example, there’s a nighttime scene where Sikandar and Saisri are in a car that Sikandar is driving. And for no reason at all, he stops the car to fight some thugs, with no explanation of who these thugs are. There’s no explanation for why “Sikandar” exists, except to rob viewers of their time, money and patience.
FunAsia Films released “Sikandar” in select U.S. cinemas on March 30, 2025, the same day that the movie was released in India.
