Veerappan The Bandit King Season 1 series review: AMR Ramesh recycles parts of Attahasa with additional footage that has no value add

Veerappan The Bandit King series story: A post-graduate student in Criminal Psychology, Vijetha, decides to make Veerappan her chosen subject for her master’s dissertation after stumbling across old interviews of the late Power Star Puneeth Rajkumar, following his untimely demise, in which he discusses allegations that his business deals resulted in his father, Dr Rajkumar, being kidnapped by Veerappan. Intrigued, Vijetha sets out to learn more about the forest brigand who was slain in 2004, by speaking to people who knew him directly or indirectly, among others.

Veerappan The Bandit King series review: A few years ago, filmmaker AMR Ramesh had announced his intention to make a web series on the life of slain forest brigand Veerappan, a subject that he had condensed into film format in 2013. While his film, released in Kannada and Tamil as Attahasa and Vana Yuddham, respectively, was a tad under 3 hours, for the series, Ramesh was targeting close to 18 hours of footage, split into 3 seasons. The first of this is now streaming on Waves OTT with 6 episodes.

Now, if Veerappan’s been a subject of interest and you have seen enough film or documentary adaptations about him, rest assured, there’s nothing new or even remotely interesting in Ramesh’s series. Worse still, if you’ve seen either Attahasa or Vana Yuddham, you will also realize that he’s recycled portions of the film, with minor additions featuring actor Kishore as Veerappan and Suchendra Prasad as forest officer Srinivasan. Both actors have visibly aged since the 2013 film and that is glaringly noticeable in the new mix.

Also read: AMR Ramesh on making a web series on Veerappan 

That the director would use earlier footage was clear when the trailer of the show dropped online and featured a shot of actor-filmmaker Rishab Shetty back in the days when he was Ramesh’s associate on Attahasa. The shots of Action King Arjun Sarja are also from the film, but he doesn’t feature in Season 1 yet. Ramesh claims to have shot new footage with veteran actor Suresh Oberoi as the late Dr Rajkumar, but what you see in the series feels like a direct lift from the film.

At best, Veerappan The Bandit King is a vanity project, not for Ramesh, but his daughter, who plays the psychology student Vijetha. She gets a lot of screen time, supposedly as part of her thesis research, with pretty much everyone who has some input to offer, including officials and former associates of the sandalwood smuggler, more than willing to indulge a student.

Ramesh had earlier told OTTplay that the first season of the show would focus on Veerappan’s early years and culminate in 1993, when Shankar Bidari takes charge as the Karnataka SIT head. Instead, it begins with the Dr Rajkumar kidnapping, then goes back to his childhood and early days of poaching to his encounter with forest officer P Srinivas (Suchendra Prasad), who almost captured Veerappan in 1986 and consistently tried to reform the smuggler. The show follows the events leading to Srinivas’ eventual death at the hands of Veerappan.

Veerappan’s wedding to Muthulakshmi, the death of his close associate Gurunatha (AMR Ramesh), the Meenyam ambush and killing of SI Shakeel Ahmed and the Palar blast in which he killed 22 of a 41-member joint team of police and forest officials, have all been included in Season 1.

Veerappan The Bandit King review: Should Veerappan be a subject of interest, the better bet would be to check out AMR Ramesh’s film, either in its original or dubbed format or the more recent documentary by Sharath Jothi, Koose Muniswamy Veerappan , which features actual footage of the forest brigand as shot by Nakheeran Gopalan. Veerappan The Bandit King is available with Kannada, Tamil and Hindi audio and no subtitles.