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Four years ago, on December 3, 2014, a grand jury in Staten Island decided not to indict police officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of Eric Garner, a 43-year-old African-American father of five.

The city of New York exploded in protest. Garner’s horrific death in July of that year had been captured on cell phone video. Police tried to arrest him, ostensibly for selling untaxed cigarettes — it is not at all clear that he was actually doing this at the time — and when he refused he was placed in what turned...

Reportedly the biggest-budgeted and most widely released Bollywood production ever, “Thugs of Hindostan” is an exuberantly excessive masala of swashbuckling heroics, broader-than-broad comedy, propulsively choreographed action, and raucously caffeinated song-and-dance sequences. Writer-director Vijay Krishna Acharya, a creative force behind the popular “Dhoom” movies, has borrowed freely from Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean,” even to the point of having Indian superstar Aamir Khan often come across as a smudged carbon of Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow while playing a similarly unreliable rogue. But for all its recycled elements and predictable narrative stratagems, this diverting Diwali-timed extravaganza stands on its own merits as a lightly satisfying popcorn epic — provided, of course, you have a taste for such over-the-top amusement.

During the darkly majestic opening scenes — set in 1795, when the Indian subcontinent was known as Hindostan — Acharya provides the impetus for a tale of rebellion, revenge, and redemption as members of a...