Takkar: Neither style nor substance

Story:

Gunashekhar aka Gunz (Siddharth) works for a luxury taxi service in Vizag. An attempt to get quick rich puts him on an immoral path. Mahalakshmi aka Lucky (Divyansha Kaushik), a self-styled millionaire, crosses paths with him after developing differences with his dominating dad. A local gangster (Abhimanyu Singh) is determined to nab her. Meanwhile, Gunz and Lucky have to figure out if they are truly in love with each other.

Performances:

Siddharth was supposed to look angry/enraged but he tries to appear stoic. Divyansha doesn`t glam it up despite the nature of her underwritten, partly sexualized role. Nowhere do we feel for her; her confident conclusions and modernist dilemmas appear shallow in the absence of cogent characterization. Abhimanyu Singh is a human trafficker who looks like a comedy piece.

Yogi Babu`s characterization had no business in a film of this sort. The second half is dragged down several notches because of his track. Contrasting his oddball track is the broad serious trajectory of the story.

Technical Departments:

Music (songs): Totally unmemorable.

Background score: Very ordinary and sometimes absent.

Editing: Nothing home to write about.

Action choreography: Plain.

Analysis:

This movie suffers from a crisis of genre. It is neither an earnest action entertainer nor an idiosyncratic rom-com. Not knowing where to focus its strengths, it becomes a confused film.

The dialogues border on the pseudo-intellectual. Unintendedly funny conversations are spun around cringe scenes. The heroine makes the hero dress up as a female and explains it away by calling herself a feminist. The hero tells a noodles-eating foreign national that he eats fish `pulusu` and therefore possesses superior intelligence to him.

Merits:

Almost nil. The romance has been done tastefully, somewhat.

Demerits:

Weak storyline.

Silly characterizations.

Asinine dialogue.

The Radio Jockey friend`s character is routine. The conversations between him and the hero are unnatural.

The build-up given to the `rowdysthan` doesn`t generate the desired impact.

Silly comedy that never grows beyond using insults like `Oora pandi`, etc.

Overall rating: 1.75/5

Box office verdict: Takkar is bekaar