The entry of Gunasekar, played by actor Siddharth, in filmmaker Karthik G Krish’s Takkar reminds one of the stylish and memorable introduction of Madhavan in Alaipayuthey. Except, the staging in Takkar is intended to be funny.
Gunasekar regrets being born into a poor family, and his ultimate goal is to become rich. He tries his hand at numerous jobs but does not compromise on self-respect, losing many opportunities in the process. Whether or not his perspective will change after a journey with Lakshmi (Divyansha Kaushik) forms the plot of the story.
Takkar is a typical road movie with all the regular ingredients — a car drive on a highway, intimacy in a motel, the protagonist going through a crisis, and a self-discovery. Filmmaker Karthik goes a bit overboard to emphasise the film’s genre by using cars as a motif. For instance, Gunasekar drives a car for a living, Lakshmi has a stash in a vintage car and smokes up only there, Lakshmi’s father is an industrialist dealing with automobiles, her fiance too is in the same industry. Phew…
The effort put in by Karthik to make an ‘authentic’ road movie is evident, but these elements alone cannot redeem Takkar, which lacks cohesion.
Takkar starts off on a serious note, with Gunasekar struggling to find a job, eventually working as a premier service cab driver under a cruel man, who for some unexplained reason is Chinese. Siddharth performs well in these scenes and makes you feel for his character. But once the story moves away from this, there is hardly anything to make one sit through the film. Everything that happens later feels too random and too predictable.
Karthik experiments with comedy too, but sadly, the type of comedy he employs is too outdated and not funny. The victims he uses for this shtick are Yogi Babu and Vigneshkanth. Yogi Babu is again put through horrible body shaming in the name of ‘comedy’.
Vigneshkanth, who plays an RJ in the film, is Gunasekar’s friend. His character in the film is as pointless as the observations he makes in his radio show. He is that ‘friend’ who is merely there for laughs. Vignesh makes many jokes, none of which land. And he is not to be blamed.
Packed among these outdated ideas, is a surprising freshness in how Lakshmi’s character is written. She is a feminist who lives on her terms, but how Karthik conveys this is mildly disturbing. Implying that she slept naked by showing her undergarments on the floor, and voyeuristically placing the camera beneath her as she climbs down a flight of stairs, makes you question Karthik’s understanding of feminism.
Lakshmi, who does not believe in love, feels that everything is a sexual attraction and the feeling disappears after intercourse. She is a modern, rich woman who wants to escape from the money-minded people around her. Divyansha, who plays Lakshmi, tries hard but fails to make an impression.
While Yogi Babu and Vignesh were hired to do ‘comedy’, unintentionally it is Abhimanyu Singh, who plays a human trafficker and the Chinese gangster, who fulfils that role.
Except for Gunasekar’s character, none of the other characters are well written. Nor is the screenplay tight enough to make this road movie interesting. Gunasekar is depressed about his earnings and his sister needs Rs 1 lakh to join a college. At no point in the film, they try to address this. Just like the Alaipayuthey call back, there is also a scene reminiscent of Kadhalan.
Takkar suffers from inconsistency. It is a messy ride with poor writing and outdated ideas.
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the producers or any other members of its cast and crew.