Of late, there have been fairly a number of Indian movies and TV exhibits which have centred animals, each pets in addition to from a wildlife/conservationist standpoint. The SonyLiv collection Pet Puraan, the Vijay Sethupathi movie Mughizh, the Kannada movie 777 Charlie; these tales tried to seize one thing distinct and highly effective about pets and the way we join with them. Whereas Sherni, Junglee et al had extra of a wildlife conservationist standpoint. Most lately, Amar Kaushik’s Bhediya used the style beats of a werewolf story to make a bigger level concerning the human-animal interface.

Victor Mukherjee’s Lakadbaggha, starring Anshuman Jha and Riddhi Dogra, is maybe essentially the most polemic of all of those movies and exhibits. The story of a shy, awkward martial arts teacher who’s additionally an animal rights vigilante by evening in Kolkata, Lakadbaggha wears its messaging on its sleeve. Its screenplay doesn’t all the time carry the burden of its ambitions. The setup is overly lengthy and the decision a bit too simple, however when it really works Lakadbaggha is numerous enjoyable. Part creature horror, half martial arts underdog story, it is a movie that’s unapologetically honest, even at the price of sounding sanctimonious at instances.

Arjun (Jha), whose late father Tarun (Milind Soman) taught him martial arts and get up for himself, has develop into a thorn within the flesh of a Kolkata-based gang of animal traffickers, spearheaded by Aryan D’Souza (Paresh Pahuja). To complicate issues, Arjun is falling for Aryan’s sister Akshara (Riddhi Dogra), the cop who’s additionally gunning for Arjun’s alter ego, the ‘Boy with the Hoodie’, the vigilante who has been beating up animal traffickers by evening — one evening, in doing so, he rescues the titular striped hyena, who he then befriends in opposition to all odds.

Improbable as that sounds, Lakadbaggha’s slow-burn narrative makes it work, as we’re step by step launched to the again story for all three important characters — we study, for instance, that Akshara and Aryan’s father was a disgraced forest officer. This permits us to grasp how the identical incident impacted these two siblings in very other ways, the way it not directly led to them selecting the divergent lives they finally did; one turns into a smuggler, the opposite a cop. In one of many movie’s most attention-grabbing conversations, Arjun and Aryan are speaking about what it means to evolve as an animal, and whether or not Darwinism is a lesson for human beings as properly. It doesn’t fairly go as laborious because it might have, but it surely’s a enjoyable little scene.

The hand-to-hand fight scenes on this movie are well-shot and impeccably deliberate. They’re among the most fulfilling elements of the movie. The director of pictures right here, Jean-Marc Selva, has beforehand shot fights for the AFC (Australian Fighting Championship), a well-liked combined martial arts event. The stunt coordinator Kecha Khamphakdee has labored with martial arts star Tony Jaa on the movie Ong Bak 2. That’s the sort of motion pedigree you need in a martial arts film, and it exhibits in Lakadbaggha’s hand-to-hand fight scenes. I’d particularly single out Khamphakdee for his combat choreography as a result of even with the Ong Bak movies, the problem was to indicate the 5 ft 6 in. Tony Jaa taking down vastly bigger and extra muscular opponents utilizing Muay Thai, the kickboxing-adjacent fashion that emphasizes knee and elbow strikes. He has precisely the identical problem right here with the marginally constructed Anshuman Jha, and he comes by with flying colors.

At the tip of the day, although, Jha is that this movie’s largest draw. His efficiency is finely calibrated. Arjun’s social awkwardness by no means turns into generic gaucheness. The vulnerability by no means comes throughout as childishness. The shows of pent-up anger are expertly carried out and he has clearly put in numerous work into the bodily facet of his efficiency as properly. The haircut, the vest and the poster in his room all invoke Bruce Lee, with out shouting it from the rooftops or making it an outright fetish, like Ram Gopal Varma’s so-bad-it’s-good Enter the Girl Dragon.

Where the movie is let down is its pacing and screenplay, particularly the second half, the place occasions transfer at a dizzying tempo in comparison with the primary. The tonal dissonance can really feel a bit jarring at instances, till Jha and Dogra carry issues to parity with their performances. On the entire, that is very a lot a sweet-natured, fulfilling style mashup that might have been one thing particular with a sharper script.

Aditya Mani Jha is a Delhi-based impartial author and journalist, presently engaged on a e book of essays on Indian comics and graphic novels.

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