Kannappa

... triumphs largely due to its mythological appeal and a goosebumps-inducing final 20 minutes. The lead performances are exemplary, with Akshay Kumar standing out as one of the film’s biggest strengths.

Watch it if you enjoy sacred stories with strong visual storytelling and emotional payoff. Kannappa ends on a powerful note that resonates with devotees and admirers of culturally rooted cinema.

... this mythological film banks more on the devotion and star power of the cameos than screenplay, direction and execution.

Kannappa remains incoherent for most parts, and the disjointed storytelling leaves a lasting dent in it. If the unimaginative world-building, compounded by some high-level hammy acting, becomes its chief shortcoming then the lack of narrative urgency damages things further.

The film had the scope to stand out as a soul-stirring devotional film. But the faulty execution makes this one a missed opportunity. While the core theme and action sequences hit the right note, the shoddy VFX, preachiness, melodrama, and inconsistent performances fail to evoke the required emotions needed for a devotional film of this scale.

While the core story of Kannappa occupies only about one-third of the film's runtime, the war and the romance take up the rest, and the film loses out on novelty by echoing Baahubali. Though the production design and technical brilliance work in its favour, Kannappa could have relied more on visuals and trimmed down the long monologues that feel like straight lifts from past iterations of the story.