Takkar loosely translates to awesome, but it has very less relevance to Karthik G Krish’s sophomore film, which narrates the story of two losers running for and away from life. While Gunasekaran (a) Guns is chased by poverty, helplessness, and a Chinese gang, Mahalakshmi (a) Lucky is hunted by emptiness and a gang of kidnappers. Considering the complexities surrounding each of them, titling the film Makkar perhaps would have made more sense. Their paths converge only close to the interval marking the beginning of the better part of the film.
Until then, the focus is majorly on the series of unfortunate events in the life of Gunasekaran. Starting from getting a messy beard trim from a distracted hairdresser to getting almost killed by a violent boss who cusses him to eat crap, quite literally, Guns only go through the worst of the worst, day after day. Ideally, whenever a protagonist goes through such hardships in a masala entertainer, we know a cathartic elevation is on the way.
Director Karthik plants a similar sequence in Takkar, where Siddharth’s Guns enters a den of gangsters. He aims to create gratifying, whistle-worthy moments with this stretch, but they fall flat due to the shallow writing. The preceding shaming episodes of Guns are so ruthless that we needed something extraordinary in the transformation scene to compensate for it. But, alas! The tonal shifts, which were minor inconveniences till then, start becoming major roadblocks and prevent us from even remotely connecting with the film.
On several occasions, Takkar reminds us of other films with similar plot points like 10 Endrathukulla, Jiivi and Paiyaa. But here, lack of novelty isn’t our primary concern as Karthik keeps us squirming with incessant, sub-standard attempts at comedy. For the nth time, Yogi Babu gets body shamed in the guise of humour, and Abhimanyu Singh tries to channelise his inner Goundamani and beats up his sidekicks even for the simplest of all reasons. Munishkanth makes a forgettable cameo only to deliver a slew of random counters, and none of these evoke an iota of laughter. But what actually leaves the audience in splits is a rather serious dialogue Lucky delivers post her breakup to a chauffeur: “I have changed my keep; you can keep my change.”
In the final act, the film enters into serious territory, where the emotions and performances are on point and we are almost convinced that this stretch can make up for the unamusing parts. But Karthik’s urge to infuse humour kicks in and we get a ‘comical’ exchange between a main character who is held hostage and Guns who can save him. In the very next scene, we see the character being stripped and tortured, and by this point, it becomes impossible to stomach the multiple personality disorder of the screenplay by then.
The saving grace of the film is the earnest performance of the lead pair. Siddharth and Divyansha are compelling and share great chemistry on screen. Though it’s almost love at first sight, they sell their ‘it’s complicated relationship quite effectively and we really wish that the film just stuck to their
romance without any side tracks.
Divyansha’s expressions and lip-sync game are on point and she aces the role as the mysterious girl recovering from bad parenting. Incidentally, she played a similar role in Michael, and I just hope she doesn’t get trapped in this stereotype. As I walked out of the hall, I felt bad for the lead actors as their efforts go for a toss because of the haphazard writing. They certainly deserved better, and so did we.
Director: Karthik G Krish
Cast: Siddharth, Divyansha Kaushik, Abhimanyu Singh, RJ Vigneshkanth