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Mix terrible writing, poor editing, chaotic direction and exaggerated action sequences in a blender and you get The Paradise—a film which was still under postproduction a day before its release.
Starring Nani, Kayadu Lohar, Raghav Juyal, Mohan Babu, Sampoornesh Babu, Sonali Kulkarni and others, is the latest Telugu film about an oppressed community after Ram Charan’s Peddi. A story about oppression demands specificity, empathy and an understanding of the community being portrayed. But Paradise substitutes substance for violence, spectacle and an atrocity fantasy.
Set in the 1980s, Paradise follows Jadal (Nani), a member of the fictional denotified tribe of Savaris, who are enslaved by Shikanja Malik (Mohan Babu), a feudal lord who forces them to brew illicit liquor. The film immediately establishes Shikanja Malik as an all-powerful figure who controls the area called Paradise and exercises influence over politicians and the police. But the film never bothers to establish where this power comes from or how his control over the area actually works. Like much of the writing in Paradise, his authority is simply declared rather than constructed.
The Savaris are marked from birth with a tattoo on their heads by Shikanja Malik, and denied government assistance, including medical care. They are not issued identity cards and are routinely branded as thieves by the police. Jadal's mother Sammakka spends her life trying to secure identity cards for the community. But Shikanja Malik kills whoever attempts to aid the Savaris in this.
As a child, Jadal is beaten and has the words “son of a whore” tattooed on his forearms after he steals and attempts to slap Shikanja Malik’s son, Chota Malik (Raghav Juyal). Shikanja Malik tells him that he should remember that he is a son of a whore every time he eats. Now Jadal starts to despise his mother. Shortly after, he is sent to prison on murder charges. Jadal returns to Paradise after 14 years determined to avenge the trauma inflicted on him.
But killing the villain instantly would end the film, so instead, rather lazily a sub-plot with Subbu (Kayadu) is forced in. The subplot seems to purely exist to beautify the frames with the mise-en-scene. While the scenes in Yakut Mahal theatre and Liberty Cafe are cinematic, they do not make any meaningful contribution to the story.
Writer-director Srikanth Odela divides the film into chapters with deliberately poetic titles, seemingly reaching for the kind of chapter-based storytelling associated with Quentin Tarantino. But Tarantino's films use chapter structures to shape rhythm, perspective and storytelling. Here, the chapter titles mostly embellish what remains a largely linear and increasingly drab narrative. The chapter names deceive you with the idea of a story structure without actually providing one.
The problem with Paradise is that it wants to be both a revenge drama and a story about resistance against systemic oppression but fails on both fronts spectacularly. The film keeps increasing the volume of its violence without giving the audience a corresponding emotional investment in the people subjected to it.
The film's most obvious metaphor is the crow. Srikanth Odela repeatedly compares the Savaris to crows, leading to a striking dialogue about how history celebrates parrots and doves while refusing to tell the story of crows even though they’re all birds.
It is an impressive metaphor to describe discrimination and oppression but unfortunately the film does little with it visually or narratively. The crows rarely become a meaningful symbol of the community's history, survival or oppression. They are mostly reduced to literal imagery during fight sequences.
The violence is even more troubling because the film repeatedly subjects the Savaris to humiliation, torture and brutality without giving those scenes the emotional or political context they require. Atrocity becomes an aesthetic. The camera lingers on suffering, bodies and blood, while the writing rarely gives the characters enough interiority for that suffering to register as anything more than spectacle.
The result is a strange contradiction: a film that is ostensibly about an oppressed community ends up treating that community primarily as a canvas on which to paint increasingly elaborate images of violence.
There are also glaring problems with continuity and logic. In one scene, Chota Malik attempts to kill Jadal's mother and Jadal shoots one of the henchmen. Yet the same man appears later. He should have died or at least show signs of an injury, but there is no clarity.
In another sequence, Jadal confronts Shikanja Malik and humiliates him by holding his collar. What stops Malik from killing Jadal right at the spot? The reasons are not established clearly.
These structural flaws expose the hollow writing, direction and editing.
Jadal's appearance has a backstory. His mother insists on braiding his hair when he is a child. Yet after he grows up and begins to resent her, the film offers no convincing reason for why he continues to wear his hair that way. Such details may sound trivial, but they become noticeable because the film repeatedly attempts to assign significance to its characters' appearances and behaviour without following through.
The production design further weakens the film's claim to authenticity. Paradise, where the Savaris supposedly live, often looks less like a functioning locality and more like a constructed set. Apart from a few archways, the community is never properly established as a living space. Shikanja Malik's house has the same problem. It frequently looks empty and artificial. Almost every important sequence takes place at night or in the rain, and the constant darkness eventually becomes more exhausting than atmospheric.
The film also inexplicably introduces a character modelled on former Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao. It feels like a cheap political gimmick aimed at the Telangana agitation nostalgia and KCR's followers, but there is little substance behind the reference. Instead of enriching the political world of the film, it becomes another distraction.
Srikanth touches on several subjects which are a taboo in mainstream cinema, which is quite bold, but when these issues involve a vulnerable community, they run into the risk of fantasising about atrocities.
The supporting cast fares little better. Tanikella Bharani is severely underused, while Sampoornesh Babu is largely wasted. Raghav Juyal’s role isn’t impactful. It is Sonali Kulkarni and Mohan Babu who get more substantial parts. And it is a delight to watch Mohan Babu in a villain role after a long time.
Composer Anirudh keeps amping up the music to elevate a scene’s intensity but a high volume cannot polish incoherent and lazy writing.
The disturbing aspect of Paradise is not simply how violent it is, but how casually it turns the suffering of a fictional oppressed community into visual spectacle. By making the Savaris fictional, the film avoids directly attaching its most offensive depictions to an identifiable real-world community. But that does not make the portrayal any less troubling. The film repeatedly humiliates, brutalises and dehumanises them while offering remarkably little information on who these people are beyond their suffering.
Some of these scenes might have worked had the film spent enough time establishing its characters, their relationships and the world they inhabit. Instead, the film keeps reaching for the next violent set piece.
Paradise ultimately mistakes brutality for profundity. Its violence is loud, its imagery is occasionally striking and its ambitions are obvious. But beneath all that noise is a screenplay that is superficial. The narrative repeatedly loses its way. And its portrayal of oppression too often feels less like an attempt to understand suffering and more like an attempt to aestheticise it.
The Paradise is not ruined by its grotesque violence alone. It is decimated by what the violence exposes: a film that desperately wants to say something profound about oppression but has neither the writing nor the restraint to make that argument.
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.
