The year is 2016. Following India’s disastrous Olympic campaign, a high-level sports review meeting is convened in Kolkata. Furious over the country’s abysmal performance, the Sports Minister tears into officials, threatens to shut down sports facilities, and slash funding. Amid the chaos, a dejected sports scout (played by Boman Irani) is tasked with identifying fresh talent.
For reasons the film never bothers to properly explain, Boman Irani arrives in Vizianagaram. There, he finds hundreds of youngsters carrying cricket bats and sports gear, lining up for selections. The source of this sporting revolution, we are told, is a man named Peddi. Much like Devara, the narrative is structured around people speaking in awe of the protagonist before we actually meet him. Through Boman Irani’s character, who essentially serves the same function as Prakash Raj’s character in Devara, we are gradually introduced to Peddi.
Directed by Buchi Babu Sana, Peddi marks the filmmaker’s second outing after Uppena. Ram Charan plays the titular role alongside Janhvi Kapoor, Shivarajkumar, Divyendu Sharma, Jagapathi Babu, and others. The film follows a man from an oppressed tribal community living in a hamlet that the government refuses to officially recognise. The residents possess no voter IDs, no government documents, and not even the dignity of an acknowledged existence. Forced into manual scavenging and other degrading labour, they are collectively referred to as “Konda Kindha Unnollu” — the people beneath the hill.
Peddi faces discrimination both from caste hierarchies and an indifferent state apparatus. Their village lacks basic infrastructure, including a railway station, and the people are effectively invisible to the system. On paper, this sounds like fertile ground for a powerful social drama. In execution, however, Peddi feels like a patchwork quilt stitched together from far better films but bereft of their earnestness.
The film borrows heavily from Mari Selvaraj’s Karnan, replacing the fight for a bus stop with a fight for a railway station. Its sports narrative echoes Pa Ranjith’s Sarpatta Parambarai, while several emotional scenes resemble Mari Selvaraj’s Bison. There are even traces of The Karate Kid scattered throughout a few scenes. Inspiration is one thing; wholesale imitation is another. Peddi rarely feels like a film with an identity of its own.
What makes matters worse is Buchi Babu’s inability to connect these borrowed elements into a coherent narrative. The screenplay is riddled with logical inconsistencies and contrivances that make entire stretches feel as though they were written after the fact.
When we finally meet Peddi, he is introduced as an “aata coolie” — a player for hire. Local villages literally conduct an auction to acquire his services for cricket matches. Besides working in a jaggery-making unit, he is portrayed as an extraordinary batsman capable of carrying entire teams on his shoulders.
His clashes with upper-caste villagers culminate in humiliation and police violence, leading him to realise that the larger battle is not against local oppressors but against a state that refuses to acknowledge his community’s existence. Up to this point, the film appears to be heading somewhere meaningful. Then it abruptly derails itself.
Despite establishing Peddi as a cricketing phenomenon, the screenplay suddenly shifts gears when Gourinaidu (played by Shivarajkumar) witnesses Peddi’s extraordinary batting abilities and asks him to become a wrestler. Why? Because the plot requires it. If Gourinaidu liked Peddi’s courage in the face of defeat, shouldn’t he help him in becoming a state-level cricket champion?
Anyway we are asking for too much. After Gourinaidu’s introduction, Peddi morphs from a cricket drama into Sarpatta Parambarai-lite. Training montages appear. Wrestling takes centre stage. Karate Kid-style mentorship follows. None of it feels organic. The narrative simply jumps from one genre and one sport to another, hoping the audience will not notice the disconnect.
The writing frequently borders on the absurd. To emphasise the community’s lack of education, one subplot shows a father, who is away at work in town, writing down a few Telugu letters. Yet Jagapathi Babu’s character, Appalasoori, from the same supposedly illiterate community, spends his time drafting petitions to government officials seeking a railway station. The contradiction perfectly encapsulates the film’s shallow writing.
The film does not believe in subtlety; there are no metaphors or memorable cinematic moments. Instead, everything is driven through exaggerated dialogues and overblown performances.
Characterisation is equally poor. Peddi is the only character with anything resembling an arc. Everyone else exists purely as a plot device. They appear when the screenplay needs them and disappear once their function is complete.
The film’s treatment of women is arguably its most embarrassing aspect. Janhvi Kapoor (who plays Achiyamma) is reduced to little more than a glamorised prop, the camera relentlessly objectifying her.
Even more disturbing is the film’s handling of romance. Peddi’s behaviour towards Achiyamma includes stalking, coercion, and forced physical advances. At one point, he effectively assaults her under the guise of expressing love. Rather than condemning this behaviour, the film attempts to justify it by presenting it as the only way he knows how to communicate affection. The result is not romantic but deeply uncomfortable.
The hypocrisy becomes impossible to ignore later when villains target Janhvi’s character through public humiliation and attempted sexual violence. Although Peddi eventually comes to her rescue, the film expects audiences to cheer for a man who has already violated her boundaries himself. The distinction between hero and perpetrator becomes alarmingly blurred.
To make matters worse, the film inserts a completely unnecessary item song in which a scantily dressed Shruti Haasan dances along with Janhvi Kapoor before a large crowd of drunken men, further reducing its female characters to objects of spectacle.
Jagapathi Babu emerges as one of the few actors given material worth engaging with. Everyone else, including accomplished performers like Shivarajkumar and Divyendu Sharma, is wasted. Even AR Rahman’s music cannot salvage a film so fundamentally broken at the script level.
Peddi is a film that constantly changes shape without ever finding a clear purpose. Rather than delivering an inspiring sports drama or a powerful tale of social justice, it ends up as a confused, derivative, and frustratingly shallow film that raises countless questions while offering almost no satisfying answers.
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 film’s producers or any other members of its cast and crew.
