Yudhra, a mass action thriller starring Siddhant Chaturvedi and Malavika Mohanan was released on the eve of National Cinema Day on Friday, 20th September. The film announced its ticket to be available for just ₹99 to celebrate the occasion of Cinema Day, thinking it will boost its sales on the opening day, and will follow with a buzz around the film. This proved to be effective as well as the opening day recorded a collection of 4.5 crores, despite the fact that the tickets were too cheap. This shows the movie indeed sold a lot of tickets.
But the effect of bad marketing, poor star cast and overly relying on action was evident in the subsequent days. The movie gathered quite a collection on the opening day, but on the next day (where the collection should have been better considering it was a weekend) the collection reduced to less than 2 crores. On Sunday as well the film recorded a meagre collection of 2.35 crores. This reduction in the collection shows the people did not appreciate the film and are looking for better options to watch. The film had a buzz around it on the opening day due to cheap tickets which faded away on the subsequent days.
Critics too pose more negative than positive words for the film. The film is being called something that is “relentlessly violent”, “hollow” and a film that has no freshness to offer. Looking at the character of Siddhant in the film, people commented that he deserves way better than this and that the character is ruining Siddhant’s true potential. People have called the film a cliché where the characters, plot and theme is just what we get from any Bollywood spy movie these days.
The makers of the film were already being criticized for bad marketing, people even said this means they have lost faith in their own work. The film’s trailer had nothing to promise other than action, which we have had enough this year. A good storyline was missing from this movie which could have saved it, but alas, the movie suffers now. Although the movie has delivered better performance than many projects this year, considering the hype it had around itself and the promise the creators had made through this film, it failed to deliver them.
The film is doing quite good and we can soon expect it to be a hit. But one does not expect this average performance from a movie of that budget and potential. People look forward to action movies which always become the attention grabbers and highest grossers, hence the performance Yudhra has shown this weekend can not be called a success for the movie.