LAW (Kannada) Review

LAW is the first direct to OTT release from the Kannada industry. Coincidentally the first direct OTT release from Tamil was the lacklustre PonMagal Vandhal. The similarities do not end there. Both are courtroom dramas involving a female lawyer, it is the protagonist’s first case and has a personal angle, the crime involved is rape, both also share the Judge-attendant banter that goes nowhere and contributes nothing. Another unfortunate similarity- both the movies seem to be mounted solely on a clever twist without the supporting hinges of story, screenplay and acting.

Unraveling the Puzzling Choices

LAW is guilty on account of non-performance in all departments. The characters seem to be picked up from the sets of a different movie or a nursery play. The police officer (Mandya Ramesh) who registers the complaint is so over the top and loud, he could have dubbed for this movie sitting in Mandya (a town 100 KMS from Bagalore) and still get recorded by the dubbing studio mic in Bangalore. Exhibiting excessively loud behavior and sharing inappropriate, humorless jokes raises questions about his conduct. Talented performers like Avinash and Mukhyamantri Chandru delivering lines resembling a low-budget soap opera also prompts inquiry. Additionally, the inclusion of comedic bashing of the judge’s wife during a court session begs the question of its necessity. These queries may surface on platforms like Quora, vying for attention among other unanswered questions, including the fate of Leo’s totem’s spinning conclusion in Inception.

Whydunit!

The audience takes the role of voters from the constituency of a nepotistic incumbent for granted. We must acknowledge that Ragini Prajwal’s character is smart. Why? Because she plays with a Rubik’s cube. Or because the defence lawyer says that he underestimated her. The court proceedings and her arguments fail to showcase this trait. The judge character is cast in the same mould as the judge from Jolly LLB, but built with the discarded material and diluted with silly dialogues. One might ask, where is the plot? It’s lost somewhere in the labyrinthine maze of comedy that does not work, dialogues that are out of place, and editing that is hurried at some places and sluggish at others. By the time the ‘whydunit’ unravels, the only question one seems to be asking is the existential one: WHY?

Puneet Rajkumar Productions

Puneet Rajkumar Productions has invested in some brilliant experimental movies like Kavaaludaari and Mayabazaar 2016. Hope this remains a minor blip in this interesting list. LAW belongs to the genre of court room dramas like Pink or the more recent Article 375 in the same way as ‘cats belong to the tiger family’ (this biology defying line is from the movie). In the meanwhile, the fire that engulfed the room full of law books with the release of PonMagal Vandhal has been fanned by LAW. Here’s looking to a well-made movie in this genre that douses the fire.