Simbaa Movie Review: This high concept thriller goes haywire

Simbaa, the sci-fi crime thriller that released this week, begins by capturing the daily life of Akshika (Anusuya Bharadwaj), a gentle and righteous teacher who is a respectable figure both at the workplace and in her neighbourhood. It becomes clear only at the 40-minute mark that the film has multiple protagonists whose lives are soon going to be interlinked because of an unlikely event from their past, as director Murali Manohar Reddy stages an interesting scene where the principal characters co-incidentally land up at a gaming arcade at the same time. Murali Manohar uses a single-take tracking shot to slowly register their presence at the avenue and hint at the chaos that is going to ensue soon. This shot also remains memorable because it’s one of the rare moments in the film where Simbaa promises to be a good film, one that knows what it’s doing. For most of its other stretches, the film is a misfire.

And it’s a pity because amidst all the mediocre filmmaking, there is a fascinating one-liner of a concept from actor-writer Sampath Nandi, who uses the device of biological memory to build a twisted thriller version around the theory of the Ship of Theseus. The film establishes its three protagonists, Akshika, Faasil (Srinath Maganti), and Irani (Anish Kuruvilla), who are presented to us as self-conscientious and capable professionals in their own right. Although their paths don’t entirely cross until the interval point, we do know that there is something that binds them. 

Director: Murali Manohar Reddy

Cast: Anusuya Bharadwaj, Vashisht Simha, Jagapathi Babu, Gauthami, Anish Kuruvilla

However, Simbaa’s audacity is undone by its incompetent filmmaking. This film needed a more skilled filmmaker and far cleverer screenwriting—something that could walk the thin line between high-concept and low-brow storytelling. Unfortunately, it has too many flaws, from the shoddy filmmaking to the often stilted and awkward dialogue. The frames and visual grammar are too curtailed by its small-budget limitations, and such a basic treatment goes at odds with the film’s ambitious, expansive premise. We are talking about a story that deals with sci-fi, a message about environmental pollution, brutal crime scenes, the works.

Simbaa is ambitious at its core, but it is also gratingly campy in its execution, where the audience is expected, almost compelled, to smile at the over-the-topness of it all. There are many moments that keep reminding you of the goofiness at play here: a serious cop breaking into an air-punch after finding *one* clue about a murder case, a villain figure randomly uttering a gory line like ‘I want to smell their heart’ (the context for which is not made clear later, either). A news organisation is literally named ‘Investigative Journalism’. There is a classic buffoon cop figure who is there strictly for the punchlines. And then there’s the trademark head tilt gesture that tells us when the three leads have their ‘dark’ side switched on. The excesses are all dialled up to eleven, and not in a good way. These moments of outrageous camp arrive so often that one is almost tempted to categorise Simbaa as one of those ‘so-bad-its-good’ movie experiences. The performances are not competent, either. Jagapathi Babu remains a forceful screen presence and brings a lot of sincerity to the otherwise cliched scenes, standing out among everyone else in the cast. Vasishta N Sinha is the only one doing it right, bringing that caricaturish energy to his character in a story that’s comically over-the-top to begin with. The rest of the cast hams it up.

The screenplay rushes through the first half without ever letting the tension build up about the brutal and unexpected killings. Amidst the hurried narrative, Sampath Nandi also weaves in a half-hearted romance angle, which adds nothing to the plot except for providing a convenient way to link the stories of Faasil and Akshika.  

Once you figure out the basic plot, it’s hard to stay invested in the proceedings as the writers fail to capitalise on their promising conceit. Amidst all of its sci-fi ambitions, the film also has a thing or two to say about the environment and air pollution. The more Simbaa tries to pack in its 2-hour runtime, the more ludicrous it becomes in its final output. The second half of Simbaa is a complete train wreck, replete with an elaborate backstory that, despite its noble intentions, bores the death out of you.

It’s not a coincidence that the three protagonists of the film are a teacher, a journalist, and a doctor, standing as three righteous, justice-hungry pillars of a society that’s increasingly crumbling under the weight of its own corruption. This is the level of subtlety that filmmaker Murali Manohar is going for.

Having said that, we do need more unique takes on age-old allegorical ideas, only more intelligent, integrity-laden, and creative in their efforts. Simbaa, at best, remains a gross misstep despite its best intentions.