Takkar movie review: Raghu Shastry’s film rides on leading man Manoj’s resemblance to Darshan and nothing else

2/5

Story: Sathyuki (Manoj) is a final year graduation student, and the son of a policeman and lawyer couple. Nicknamed Onte, he spends a lot of time in the police station, after picking fights with rival groups in college. When a spate of suicide cases among young women, including one from Sathyuki’s college, crops up, the police ask him to serve as informer in case he stumbles upon anything related to the investigation. When Sathyuki’s neighbour and close family friend Deepa goes missing, it becomes personal for him and he sets out to track the criminals behind the operation that is leaving women dead.

Review: Takkar is the launchpad of Manoj Kumar, Challenging Star Darshan’s cousin’s son, who, has an uncanny resemblance to his superstar uncle. And that, it would seem is the only thing that registered with director Raghu Shastry, who put together a film that rides on his leading man’s connection and resemblance to Darshan. Every shot is supposed to tell you that this is someone from the DBoss family, and if you don’t immediately get it, there are enough dialogues that play on ‘Challenging’ and ‘Darshan Garadi Hudugaru’.

So, even though Manoj is meant to be a college student, the little time he is on campus, he is just getting into fights. Poor Ranjani Raghavan, as his love interest Punya, is supposedly a second-year-medicine student, whose only learning and course of treatment appears to be administering blood to the men Satyuki beats up. Sigh! If the educational or professional backdrop of the protagonists doesn’t matter to the narrative, I wonder why filmmakers even bother mentioning it.

At its core, though, Takkar is a cybercrime tale that harps about women falling victims to hackers who take control of the cameras on their gadgets and record them in ‘compromising’ situations. The videos are then sent to the unsuspecting victims with threats to make them public if they do not comply and do as told, in this case, forced prostitution. Those who refuse, end up taking their own lives or are killed by the gang behind this racket.

Satyuki is apparently quite the smart cookie and figures out the connect between the spate of suicides and this extortion racket. For some strange reason, the police commissioner decides to entrust him with the responsibility of taking this gang down, with the promise of departmental support. It beats me why the cops won’t do it themselves, when they have sophisticated technology to track and crack cybercrime cases and instead rely on the protagonist, who is aided by a hacker.

Most of the film is dedicated to Manoj. He’s got the height, the looks, but not the voice and has a long way to go to really make a mark. He also needs to step out of the shadow of his illustrious uncle and show audiences what else he brings to the table. Ranjani Raghavan does her best to do justice to her poorly-written role. She deserved better. The best bit of the movie was villain Saurav Lokesh, who has a better screen presence and menacing voice, but gets the standard antagonist treatment in the end.

Verdict: This is one ‘Takkar’ that does not have to be a must-do item. It may appeal to hardcore commercial film fans, but my guess is that even they might find this wanting.