Historical epic movies tend to distort real facts on a regular basis to heighten the entertainment factor—and when mainstream Bollywood movies are taken into consideration, this is all the more evident. For all their artistic value and technical brilliance, classic historical movies like Mughal-e-Azam, Jodhaa Akbar, Bajirao Mastani, and Asoka often took flights of fancy when it came to characterization and depiction of key events. This tendency marks a departure from reality so immense that the movies end up lacking historical value. The recently released Chhaava, directed by Laxman Utekar, which chronicles the prime years of the legendary Sambhaji, son of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, is no exception in that regard. Even though the movie is an adaptation of late Marathi writer Shivaji Sawant’s novel of the same name, it mostly operates as a one-man hero commercial Bollywood movie instead of a historical saga. Let us have a comparative...