Shaneil Deo’s debut, starring Adivi Sesh and Mrunal Thakur, crackles in parts with romance, caste conflict and action, but a muddled screenplay and abrupt narrative detours dilute its emotional and dramatic payoff
During one of the many high-octane chase sequences in Dacoit, cinematographer Shaneil Deo’s directorial debut (shot simultaneously in Telugu and Hindi; I watched the Hindi version), Adivi Sesh’s outlaw protagonist Hari gets the upper hand on a cop named Janaki (Zayn Marie Khan). At knifepoint, he warns her to be quiet and before vanishing into the shadows, hums a couple of lines of ‘Tu Cheez Badi Hai Mast Mast’ from Mohra (1994). It’s a smartly encoded reference, not least because a loud, exuberant Rajiv Rai potboiler, over-stuffed with twists and turns, subplots and side-quests, is exactly what Dacoit dearly wishes to be.
At its best, Dacoit deploys the 90s masala playbook to great effect, Sesh’s rakish charm and razor-sharp jawline anchoring the madcap plot. However, ultimately the writing isn’t strong enough to sustain the film’s ambitions. The screenplay doesn’t merely blend elements of a romance, a vendetta story and a cops-and-robbers thriller — it wants to be all of those things at once. By the time we are 15-20 minutes into the second half, the plot twists evoke more eye-rolls than gasps. Dacoit isn’t a bad effort on the whole — it is well-shot, with earnest performances by the lead trio, and a genuinely engaging first half. It just doesn’t quite know how to stick the landing.
A throwback in more ways than one
The setup is great fun, though, and very much a throwback affair. Hari (Sesh), a lower-caste orphan, meets and falls in love with doctor-in-waiting Saraswati (Mrunal Thakur), who he calls “Juliet”. However, when her bigoted, casteist family finds out about their relationship, they react with predictable violence, Saraswati’s brother assaulting Hari’s landlady and elder-sister-by-proxy Malathi (Kamakshi Bhaskarla). Hari fights back, killing his girlfriend’s brother — and in the revenge plot’s inciting event, Saraswati testifies against Hari and sends him to jail for over a decade for rape and murder, claiming that her late brother was the one trying to stop the assault.
Also read: Rajshri Deshpande interview: How breast cancer changed the way the actor sees life
I think Dacoit would have been a much better film had it stuck to its initial strategy of caste-based violence (combined with police corruption) leading to an ordinary man becoming the titular dacoit. It is direct and unapologetic on the matter — significantly, Hari and Malathi are turned away from a temple by Saraswati’s folks. “Duniya bade jaat waalon ki hoti hai” (The world belongs to upper-caste folks), a line from Malathi frames the issue rather starkly. We have seen this template working before in dacoit films like Bandit Queen and Sonchiriya, and it could have worked here, had director Shaneil Deo and Sesh (who has also written the story) actually stuck with the angle. Even the lead pair’s names telegraph this context — ‘Hari’ is a clear stand-in for ‘harijan’ (the now-outdated name for lower-caste individuals used by Mahatma Gandhi) while the name ‘Saraswati’ (the goddess of knowledge) signals the upper castes’ dominance-through-education.
However, the makers choose to make an organ-trafficking racket the centrepiece of the story all of a sudden. In the present day (which for the film is 2021, in the middle of the Covid pandemic) we find Saraswati, now married and looking for a heart transplant for her husband, the father of her 7-year-old daughter. We are breathlessly introduced to a smarmy new villain (Prakash Raj), the gangster-like head of the Orwellian “Karuna Hospital” (‘karuna’ is ‘compassion’ in Hindi), which is selling organs and cadavers — in overflowing supply thanks to the pandemic — on the black market. Prakash Raj is entertaining as usual but this whole subplot-turned-main-plot feels way too rushed, almost like an afterthought. And from that point on, the film goes on a downward trajectory.
Fine performances, strong visuals, subpar writing
Which is a shame, because both Adivi Sesh and Mrunal Thakur put in impressive shifts. Like Deepika Padukone and more recently, Tripti Dimri, Thakur is an exquisite performer of suffering. Her romance with Sesh brings some moments of levity — I particularly enjoyed the device of him breaking her family’s windows with a cricket ball periodically, so he can come in to fix said window and steal a few moments with his beloved. She is equally good in the intense action and chase sequences, bringing an unpredictable energy to proceedings. Sesh’s intense gaze and brooding good looks keep you hooked throughout, and his Hindi diction is so much better than most of his Telugu industry peers. Anurag Kashyap plays the always-entertaining Inspector Swamy, an Ayyappa devotee who is fond of the jaunty one-liner and the shit-eating grin. It is a role that requires a certain amount of scenery-chewing, and Kashyap is only too happy to oblige.
Also read: Ramayana: Why Nitesh Tiwari’s two-part film has sparked a debate, divided viewers
Technically, too, the film is in sound hands. Director Shaneil Deo is known for his cinematography on previous Adivi Sesh projects, especially the surprise hit spy movie Goodachari (2018) which brought slick, stylish, fast-paced Jason Bourne-style aesthetics to the Telugu industry for the first time. In Dacoit, too, several action setpieces are extremely well-shot, especially Hari’s initial escape from a police van, a money heist from Karuna Hospital in the first half, and the climactic action sequence. For the flashback scenes set between 2005 and 2008, Deo uses high-contrast colours and sun-kissed frames, projecting the youthful optimism of the lead romantic pair. In the 2021 scenes marked by lockdown visuals, we shift back to a much grittier, more greyscale colour palette with very little contrast.
I just wish the writing and pacing of the film had been a little more even. Again and again, an off-kilter joke or poorly thought-out concluding line ruins a decently set up sequence. When Hari is being handcuffed by the police, he jokes about how tight the cuffs are by saying, “Kya saheb, suhaag raat hai kyaa?” — low-key slipping in a bondage joke for some reason. When Hari sees the asthmatic Saraswati gasping for breath during a particularly stressful chase scene, he stops and remarks, “Sab kuch badal gaya, bas yeh nahi badla” — a baffling sentiment given that asthma doesn’t really have a ‘cure’, at least in the layperson’s understanding of the word.
Amateurish moments like these impede Dacoit’s progress and eventually, curb its emotional impact on the audience. In the final equation, it is a decently made masala movie, blessed with flair and technique but hamstrung by subpar writing. Adivi Sesh definitely deserves a worthy star vehicle, but Dacoit doesn’t quite meet the mark.
