FOMO Fix | ‘Kesari 2’ and more: Revisionism, representation and appropriation  Premium

FOMO Fix: Weekly guide to film and TV, exploring revisionism, satire, thrillers, and representation in entertainment.

Welcome back to FOMO Fix, your weekly dose of what to watch — and what to dodge — across film and television. This week, we take a hard look at revisionism in storytelling: the kind that reimagines history with purpose and perspective, and the kind that distorts it to fit an agenda. From the jingoistic inventions of Kesari 2 to the smarter narrative choices of Quentin Tarantino and Aaron Sorkin, we unpack the essentials of revisionism.  Also this week, we applaud a sharp animated satire from Ramy Youssef, a surprisingly effective thriller with a terrible name — Crazxy — and a take an honest look at representation and appropriation in Superboys of Malegaon.

“Beep off.” “Beep right off.” “Go beep yourself.” “Get the beep out of my country.”

Yes, that’s the complete collection of Akshay Kumar’s punchlines and “winning arguments” in Kesari 2, a film that takes a nugget of history and revises it into jingoistic mythology.

Despite criticism for historical distortion — and plagiarism accusations over a Yahya Bootwala poem — the film has collected over ₹70 crore in its second week. But this courtroom drama is no The Trial of the Chicago 7 or A Few Good Men. Those films made the war of ideas compelling with well-crafted arguments and ideological nuance — not just one-sided F-bombs thrown around like confetti.

Tarantino rewrote history too — by killing Hitler in Inglourious Basterds and saving Sharon Tate in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. But if you’re presenting an alternate timeline, the least you can do is not market it as The Untold Story of Jallianwala Bagh.

It’s not just dishonest — it’s straight-up pretentious to end the film with names of real-life victims followed by an asterisk: “Names from public domain.” Translation: “No attempt was made to verify these names, but Aaron Sorkin did it too, so… vibes?”

Representation? Akshay Kumar plays Sankaran Nair — which now apparently makes him an expert on all things starting with K: Kerala, Kathakali, Kalaripayattu. Meanwhile, R. Madhavan is fantastic in the film — making you wonder: why isn’t he Sankaran Nair?