Bagheera

I was excited to watch Bagheera, because it was a story by Prashanth Neel, and that Hombale was producing it. On top of that, it was a vigilante superhero film. All three ingredients set for a massive blockbuster that should've changed the landscape of action-superhero storytelling in India. And as a Telugite, I wanted to support good Kannada films, after the debacle that was Martin, and my own love for the land of Karnataka.

I was really geared up to witness something defining, and guess what... Boy, does it fail to live up to the hype that I had from a Prashant Neel story in the hands of another vision. And why was that?

What this film had was a crazy, out of the box idea about a policeman-gone-vigilante. I really found the concept to be interesting, and pretty unique as I've seldom seen law enforcement officers take up the mantle of a vigilante to exact justice upon criminals. This was a cool reversal of the trope of superheroes coming from ordinary backgrounds.

BINARY APPROACH: To understand why it didn't work for me, I'd have to say that characters don't seem to develop beyond binaries. Where the first half sets up the conflict between righteousness and corruption, where the protagonist (VEDANTH, played by Sri Murali) is a noble police officer and the system around him is being corrupted, the noble cop abandons hope and takes the law in his own hands. Beyond that, the protagonist has zero character development, except he has to overcome obstacles and kill people. That's it.

And then comes the antagonist (RANA, played by Garuda Ram), introduced sporadically in the first half and becomes the focal point in the second half. This is where the movie truly and absolutely fails--totally fails--to build an interesting and menacing antagonist. All attempts here to build an interesting antagonist goes in vain, to make him come off as a generic, two-dimensional villain with no depth or character arc to him. He is a pure villain for the villain sake and offers nothing of thoughtfulness. His one snippet of his childhood cruelty is reduced to a caricature-ish portrayal of evil, rather than something of human value or tragic backstory or so.

This binary approach to the antagonist, and the protagonist, fail to inject life into the narrative, despite glimpses of moments which offer you a look into the flaws of the hero (him drinking in the uniform and losing hope and stuff). But there's not a single emotional flaw or vulnerability in the antagonist, making him come off as cartoony. Maybe it's my fault to expect well-developed antagonists from a Prashant Neel story, so I'll leave that aside.

FIRST HALF GOOD, SECOND HALF BAD: Okay, I don't like this kind of argument because it invalidates the movie-going experience to the same binary nonsense above.

Because the fundamental flaw is not the making of the second half, but the 2nd act and 3rd act itself. The first half is pretty good, where the setup to the first act really engages you with the Mysore backdrop, some fun comedy with the station officers, some drama between the corrupt locals and the uncorrupt Vedanth, interesting goonies and bad guys, and some killer shots of "Roaring Star" Sri Murali walking in his police uniform. When Vedanth is overburdened by the system to stop being so noble, he loses hope, and in his hopeless state, he witnesses something very brutal that he changes his mind completely to become a vigilante called Bagheera. Bagheera goes on a rampage, killing the goons responsible for the brutality he witnessed, and that pushes him deep into the main plot/conflict. The main plot/conflict that Bagheera has to confront is that the antagonist plans a shipment of people to send to Srilanka, where they harvest their organs for black-market; and Bagheera has to stop the antagonist from doing so, while evading the crackdown of Bagheera by the CBI after a corrupt police officer brother of a CBI officer (GURU, played by Prakash Raj) gets murdered by Bagheera. The main plot of organ harvesting, with the subplot of the CBI investigating Bagheera, forms the main story which doesn't really explore anything beyond, "Bad guy does bad things, until good guy comes and kills the bad guys." (forget about the mother who inspires him to be a superhero, the dramatic conflict about corruption with his dad that goes nowhere, and the irrelevant heroine that expires with no rhyme or reason, just to push the story forward) At least, Prashant Neel did a better job with the catharsis when the good guy kills the bad guy than what Dr. Suri does half-heartedly here. It comes off more a commercial potboiler nonsense that plagues Telugu cinema, as opposed to something that's new-age. One wonders why Hombale would even go in that direction when it brought a refined, Hollywood aesthetic with KGF, Kantara and Salaar.

Anyways, coming back to the plot, the second half becomes a monotonous chore, as the plot moves from one scene to the next, without any real conflict for the protagonist to confront. There's some passable fight scenes, as the CBI tracks down his identity, and that identity leaks to the antagonist Rana, where he captures the love interest of Bagheera and gives him a choice to save the civilians or his lover; and it is from that point, the film turns into a pile of hot mess. The police capture Bagheera and then when he's taken for an encounter, the twist is that Bagheera is treated innocent by Guru, after actually knowing why Bagheera did that, and then lets him off with the location of Rana. Bagheera goes to find Rana, where he is in a cargo train enroute, to traffic the humans he kidnapped to Sri Lanka. Bagheera kills Rana and his goons, and saves the day. That's it. "Bad guy does bad things, until good guy comes and kills the bad guys." After some half-hearted set-up for a sequel, the movie ends.

Overall, I have to say, by the end of film, I was pretty exhausted despite the exhilarating enthusiasm I had in the beginning, for the entertainment I was looking forward to. Despite great cinematography, a killer soundtrack by Ajaneesh Loknath, the film leaves nothing to take away (except the song, "Rudhira Dhaara"), no real "elevations" that you expect from a Prashant Neel story.