Breaking the cycle.

The reincarnation melodrama is one of the subgenres of Indian cinema that keeps coming back, over and over again.  They tend to bring back the same tropes and plot beats over and over again as well, so it's always interesting when a movie like Raabta (2017) tries to do something different, looking to the present rather than continually focusing on the past.

Shiv Kakkar (Sushant Singh Rajput) is a young banker who has just taken a job in Budapest.  He may have a sensible and boring job, but Shiv is handsome and charming, and he knows it, so he makes quite the impression on the local ladies.  One night, Shiv and his date stumble into a chocolate shop run by driven, somber and intense Saira (Kriti Sanon) and he quickly forgets all about his date.  Shiv and Saira feel an immediate and mutual attraction, and after a minimal amount of will they-won't they, they do.

Saira lost her parents in a car accident when she was very young, and she suffers from a fear of water and recurring nightmares of blood and chains and someone drowning.  When Shiv starts appearing in these nightmares, she's moderately freaked out.  But the relationship is going so well!  Maybe too well, since the relationship seems to be moving awfully quickly.

As  a test of their relationship, Shiv and Saira attend a party and each try to pick up other people, to see if they feel the same powerful attraction to anyone else.  (this is a terrible idea, but nobody in this movie thinks anything through.)  Shiv is quickly surrounded by a half dozen ladies, while Saira strikes up a flirtation with liquor mogul Zak (Jim Sarbh.)  Zak is rich, handsome, mysterious, and charming, everything Saira used to think she wanted, but she still goes home with Shiv.

Soon after, Shiv has to leave town for a  week and the pair decide that a week's separation is another chance to test their relationship.  While Shiv is gone, Zak pops up again and strikes up a conversation with Saira.  They take a walk in the rain, they have a nice dinner, they talk about life and Saira's dreams and how she feels really ready to make a commitment to Shiv . . . and then Zak drugs her and takes her to his secluded island lair, where he explains that they were lovers in a previous life and he's been searching for her in this one, shows her his wall of creepy Saira portraits, and tells her that dinner is at eight and he's already picked out her dress.

When she's alone, Saira tries to escape.  She's caught by Zak and his men, but falls into the ocean and slips in to a flashback to eight hundred years ago, when she was the warrior princess Saiba and Zak was her deeply smitten childhood friend and bodyguard Kaabir.  Saiba's people lived on a secluded island plateau, but were threatened by the ferocious Muraakis, led by the ancient, wise, and possibly wizardly Muwaqqit (an unrecognizable Rajkumar Rao under heavy makeup) and the deadly warrior Jilaan, Shiv's previous life.  In a surprise attack, Jilaan severely wounds Kaabir and devastates Saiba's armies, so she travels to the enemy camp in disguise hoping to eliminate Jilaan personally.  Instead, they wind up falling in love, and he agrees to spare her land in exchange for her hand.

A recovered Kaabir attempts to rescue Saiba, but she refuses to leave.  Kaabir won't take no for an answer, so he murders Jilaan and throws the body in the ocean.  Saiba drowns herself, and Kaabir slits his own throat, while Muwaqqit predicts that this will all happen again.

In the present, Saira drags herself onto the beach.  She approaches Zak and tells him that she remembers everything and does not want it all to happen again, so she'll agree to marry him if he promises to spare Shiv.  Zak agrees, but he's lying because he's deranged and obsessed, making it all the more likely that it will all happen again.  Meanwhile, Shiv returns from his trip and discovers that Saira is gone and the newspapers are reporting Zak's engagement, so it's time to crash a party.  (Action banker!)

There are a lot of reincarnation movies in Indian cinema, and many of them are not very good.  part of the problem is that they spend a lot of effort on making the past lives exciting, while the characters' present incarnations are dull cardboard cutouts.  Raabta tries to get around this problem by committing to both its genres, diving wholeheartedly into romantic comedy tropes during the present scenes and embracing fantasy-historical epic tropes for the scenes set in the past.  It succeeds as well as it does largely through the strength of Rajput's two distinct performances; Jilaan is an interesting, quirky warlord with two swords and a heart of gold, but Shiv is an interesting and engaging protagonist in his own right.

Perhaps most importantly, Shiv doesn't think he's less interesting than Jilaan; he's determined to save the woman he loves, but it's specifically because he loves her now, not because his past life used to love her.