Be it a film about a feared gangster or a young college student, mainstream Indian cinema almost always makes space for a love track and the mandatory love song. Usually these songs arrive early in the film, showcasing the blossoming romance between the leading pair.
In Varun Tej starrer Matka, this moment comes as a surprise, arriving deep into the second half, going back in time, and capturing a few vignettes from the happier days of Vasu (Varun Tej) and Sujatha (Meenakshi Chaudhary), long after we have witnessed their relationship consolidate, sour, and reach a stage fraught with conflicts. It’s also one of the few moments of genuine novelty in a film that is otherwise riddled with predictability and formulaic tropes, something that it never escapes from.
Directed by Karuna Kumar, Matka suffers from a common pitfall of period dramas: attempting to establish a complex world within a limited timeframe, often sacrificing depth for breadth. As a result, the director’s emphasis always ends up on packing in a sequence of events rather than capturing the emotional graph.
So while Vasu, a refugee from Burma, moves up in his life in Vizag after coming out of prison, we barely partake in his euphoria or feel tense about the high risks he is taking. The hurried storytelling also ends up hampering the film, considering how the USP of the story—its backdrop of the massively intricate matka game—remains equally vague to the objective viewer who doesn’t know anything about this gambling form before jumping into the film.
The game of matka remains something distant that the audience observes with a blend of confusion and indifference, as opposed to jumping in the whirlpool just like Vasu does near the interval mark. It almost feels like what Matka lacks substance or originality; it tries to make up for it with its pacing and constant sense of ‘packed narrative’.
There is little space to breathe as the narrative moves from one event to another, brimming with either activity or sound—GV Prakash Kumar had delivered a cracking score for Lucky Baskhar (another period crime drama of sorts), but here the rousing themes sound overbearing and familiar. It’s possibly because of this haste that, for its all emphasis on style and period film atmosphere, Matka is also strangely devoid of any original cinematic energy.
Vasu’s first truly heroic moment—where he decides to help his boss against an army of violent men—could have been so visceral, especially with the slow build-up of silence on his part before he shouts at them, but leaves you feeling none of his euphoria.
These early parts of the film mostly make you wonder whether a story like this is suitable for a feature film at all. There is undoubtedly a lot of ground to be covered here, and Matka probably could have used some more breathing room and focus on a character-driven narrative instead of a plot-driven one.
But most importantly, Matka follows a very predictable path in terms of storytelling. Vasu moves up the ladder of crime and success in a chain of beats that are way too familiar for any regular viewer. Even the scene where Sujata, Vasu’s beloved wife, registers her displeasure at Vasu’s changing priorities or where Vasu confronts the one big traitor in his team, fails to make any impact because of its weary and predictable execution.
Vasu’s journey feels vacuous because we never get a look into his inner life throughout his turbulent progression in the world of crime. So when Vasu finally talks to his young daughter about the true wisdom of life, it feels like a much-awaited respite and yet a bit too late to make any genuine repairs.
Most of the interesting and original parts of the film arrive early on, coincidentally also the portions where it offers some sense of commentary. When a young and courageous Vasu catches the attention of the jailer (Aadi Saikumar) at the juvenile centre, he soon finds himself participating in a wrestling combat that’s arranged almost in a Fight Club-like manner for the amusement of some rich and privileged people.
Sure, we see Vasu undergo a notable transformation, both physically and socially. Yet it feels largely superficial. We never feel like an empathetic observer of his journey. Unfortunately, Varun Tej too keeps himself preoccupied with the easier parts of essaying such a character, like carrying the ageing make-up or the changing body language. His performance, especially in moments of major crises or triumph for Vasu, remains middling at best.
The actor truly shines only when Vasu grieves the sudden death of a loved family member, unable to cope with the unexpected emotional surge from within. For the rest of the film, Varun largely goes through the motions.
In his interviews, director Karuna Kumar promised plenty of social commentary in this quintessential tale of an underdog and his rise, a statement about social inequality and the blurry lines between good and evil. However, it is advisable not to expect much along these lines.
The film opens with a harrowing scene: a truckload of food arrives for the refugees, but there’s not enough to feed everyone. Among the hungry is our protagonist and his mother. A little later, even the jailer casually tells Vasu to follow the path that would make him the one with 99 per cent of the wealth everyone else yearns for.
However, it only leaves us more confused about the film’s philosophical bent or political stance. The screenplay is disappointingly undercooked in terms of establishing Vasu’s dynamics with respect to the struggling, underprivileged world around him. While Vasu visibly grows in power and wealth over a period of 17 years, with the help of a large coterie of associates and henchmen, we rarely get a glimpse of the equation he shares with them.
At a crucial moment, Vasu reflects upon his new venture of matka gambling and how at the core of this venture lies him selling hope to thousands of people in return for buying their trust. Unfortunately, like most of Matka, this dialogue ends up as a shiny embellishment stacked upon a generic storyboard—catching our attention with its gloss but adding little to the material. Matka is a colossal disappointment.
Movie: Matka
Cast: Varun Tej, Meenaakshi Chaudhary, Ajay Ghosh, Nora Fatehi, Satyam Rajesh, Kannada Kishore
Director: Karuna Kumar
Rating: 2/5 stars