Karthikeya 2

Chandoo Mondeti's 2022 Telugu film follows Karthik, a young doctor pursuing an anklet said to have belonged to Krishna. The story is built as a treasure hunt; the submerged remains of Dwarka, temple inscriptions and symbols form a chain of puzzles. Its choice is to set a religious narrative inside an adventure and present the tension between faith and science as an argument. Nikhil Siddhartha's character is written as the one who questions. The scale of the production is larger than the first film and the archaeological design is good. Its weakness is that the clues resolve too easily in the second half and some of its scientific claims rest on nothing. Who it's for: viewers who like Indian adventure cinema and mythological mysteries. Who it's not for: anyone wanting historical accuracy, or troubled by a religious narrative at the centre.