Vedha

At core, Vedha's story is done to death kind as we have seen this story unfold multiple times before. What makes this stand apart is how Harsha builds the story around his women characters than his male lead. Not that it is sensible, it mostly sticks to murder as the solution / justice. Starting in the present day, the narrative goes through non-linear style jumping from 80's to 60's comfortably. With the father - daughter duo on a killing spree, clearly to avenge the death of their mother, the story is about what really happened for the duo to take law into their hands in that brutal fashion.

Vedha remains a straight forward story told in non-linear style. Probably why it felt Harsha having more control over his script than say Bhajarangi 2 where he overstuffed the screenplay making it too much for him to handle. There isn't much deviation so Harsha's growth as a director / storyteller is visible. Like his Bhajarangi 2, even this initially had superficial dialogues and dialogue delivery but thankfully it didn't last long. The pace does drop frequently but that is more to do with the nature of the script with minimal space for entertaining scenes.

The true strength of Vedha apart from making style is definitely the performances. Shivanna on his 125th film is comfortable in downplaying his character and letting others shine. His is a matured performance where he roars only when he is required to. Aditi Sagar does well with limited dialogues firmly supporting Shivanna. Ganavi Laxman is good in her role but some of her dialogues were hard to understand due to the dialect. Shweta Chengappa did shine in a major scene which drew non stop whistles. The veteran Umashri shows off why the character poses no challenge to her and entertains well.

Since the story isn't new, it has hangover of several films but not enough to ruin the experience. Vedha still delivers despite extreme violence and pacing issues. The gimmicks do land without turning cringe which is an added advantage. Whenever the narrative stalls, the performances make up for it.