Bagheera Review - Just A Passable Psycho-Thriller!

Ashwin Ram

Bagheera is a psychological thriller starring Prabhu Deva in the lead role along with multiple heroines. The film is directed by Adhik Ravichandran who is known for his adult entertainer Trisha Illana Nayanthara.

Premise

Prabhu Deva is a psychopath murderer who kills women who he thinks are cheating on men in the name of love, similar to STR's Manmadhan. Two tracks, he assaults by finding women in-person and on the other hand he launches a public app thinking he is the saviour for all the soup boys.

Writing/ Direction

Template serial killer story, but overdo things as it tries to be Anniyan. With the backstory having sufficient stuff to create a solid impact, they aren’t productively utilized in the screenplay. It has the potential to be a mini Manmadhan, but tries to overload a sandwich. The Bagheera app portions could have been completely chopped off, although it has a meaningful payoff at the end, placing something crisper could have saved a lot of time. Also, it doesn’t allow the space required for the important sequences of Prabhu Deva with the heroines. The screenplay pattern is confusing until a point, also there is no depth in any of the scenes in the first half. Things settle down a bit in the latter and get better. The climax, despite being lengthy, leaves a mark as the story moves forward and the arc closes neatly. Amyra Dastur’s monologue in the finale is sensible addressing how lame it is to judge someone and decide to kill, the end punch is commercially fun. There are some enjoyable and unique psychotic moments that fit well for the film language. Prabhu Deva saves a girl from danger after knowing her real character, such a highlight scene which also helps in the ending. The main issue is that except Prabhu Deva, no other character is written deeply, there is no space for anyone else so there is no tension in the flow. There are also some outdated problematic dialogues and cringe moments.

Performances

Superb performance from Prabhu Deva, he shows a lot of variations and suits all the makeovers very well. The director has extracted the best out of him in terms of body language and dialogue delivery. There is no lip-sync for Amyra Dastur, other factors like her dubbing artist has done a good job, she has performed well and also her character is strong. The other heroines have zero importance, very less screen time which were more like extended cameos, so there is no scope to make a mark.

Technicalities

Musically weak, both songs and background score failed to add value to the situations, in fact in some places the visuals and re-recording are traveling in separate tracks. Good cinematography is good by trying out some weird camera angles which are so apt for the genre. Editing is messed up, the scene order for the entire first half felt so random, also there were chances to reduce the runtime but left as it is and we get to witness a lot of lags.

Bottomline

What could have been a gripping youthful thriller is watered down to be an average flick due to overstuffing things. A focused single track with limited and powerful characterizations alongside the same flashback would have been neater.

Rating - 2.5/ 5