One Cut Two Cut review: Three Cut Four Cut a team effort makes this comedy heist drama a fun watch

3.5/5

Story: Gopi is the new arts and crafts teacher at the Byatarayanapura government school, where attendance is poor and those kids who do make it are all bundled into one classroom because, well, there aren’t too many teachers either. But Gopi’s first day on the job becomes quite the mess, when four activists decide to hold everyone at the school hostage, until their demands are met. Can Gopi save the day?

Review: The biggest victory of a film is when every member of its ensemble cast gets together to do just what is required of each of them and works towards the greater good of the project. That, my friends, is the strength on which Amazon Prime Video’s latest Kannada presentation, the PRK Productions’ film One Cut Two Cut (OCTC) will ride.

Promoted as a Danish Sait film, OCTC is not about his bumbling arts and crafts teacher Gopi hogging every scene. Director Vamsidhar chooses to show Gopi just enough, but never too much, in this tale about a bunch of social media activists taking a government school hostage. And that, I believe, is what works brilliantly for this film. That’s not to say that Danish and Vamsidhar have made an extraordinary film; it’s a decent effort that is definitely not bad. And it has its moments, which come at various points from its ensemble cast, be it Prakash Belawadi, Samyukta Hornad, Vineeth Beep Kumar, Roopa Rayappa, Manosh Sengupta, Sampath Maitreya or Vamsidhar himself, among others.

OCTC is Vamsidhar’s version of Money Heist – the activists in red jumpsuits was a dead giveaway in the trailer itself. They actually come to the school wearing Daali Salvador masks, after their attempts to stage a protest at Town Hall turns a damp squib, despite the overwhelming online support for their every word. Four people, who barely know each other, band together to make a statement with this siege and get the chief minister to step down. Sure thing! The CM’s secretary, though, who’s mediating the hostage drama through ‘Professor’ Gopi, has a different vision to how this plays out and has enlisted a special agent to deal with it.

OCTC is not a laugh riot, but Vamsidhar peppers the narrative with enough gems that will have you chuckle often enough. It’s the presentation of these little things, like the fact that the four activists are non-Kannada speakers, with a set of very personal demands (like banning Amitabh Bachchan), as well as the quality of food served at government schools, lack of hygiene, poor salary structure of teachers, the ridiculous depths that the media falls to for TRPs and so much more, that make the film an interesting watch. OCTC never takes itself too serious, but it does not come across as frivolous either. You’ve just got to watch it with an open mind. This is, after all, a light-hearted Kanglish comedy film, made for a specific audience. It helps that it is all of 85-minutes long, which will just go by in a jiffy. In fact, if you skip ahead the Yaava Swargadinda dream sequence song it’s an even crisper watch.

Verdict: Only a month ago, I had watched Danish’s Humble Politiciann Nograj, which didn’t really appeal to me, so, I wasn’t sure what to expect of OCTC, especially since Gopi is not a character that we’ve seen much of. Was I being too harsh in my criticism of his film and series work, I wondered? So, I decided that the best approach to watching this one would be to not lower my expectations but go in with none at all. And that’s why, I think, I didn’t mind it all that much. Danish, I believe, is coming to terms with his strengths and weaknesses as an actor and ensures that each of his co-stars has his/her moment under the spotlight. Here, yet again, Prakash Belawadi walks away with the best role and some of the better lines too. Watch this one; it’s as we say in India – good timepass!