Have you seen those 90-minute Hollywood action flicks where a seemingly simple hero takes on an antagonist (mostly a mafia boss), the stakes are limited, there is enough budget for a few explosions and car crashes, and the script gives you the satisfaction of familiarity with few subversions?

If you are someone who likes that flavour, you might be doubly disappointed with Takkar as you would realise that Karthik G Krish had ample space, scope, and resources to pull off one such movie. And oh, the film also attempts to create a Gus Fring-ish villain; if Los Pollos Hermanos was the Breaking Bad baddie’s front for illegal activities, in Takkar, a Korean man who is always on the Upward Lotus Pose has a taxi company where a scratch on the expensive BMW will be paid back with a scratch on the driver’s body.


On the contrary, after this two-hour movie, one wonders if it’d have been better had it taken more time to realise itself. Takkar, Karthik’s debut feature effort, has an intriguing set of things assimilating as the set-up, they lead to a peculiar conflict, and we even get an impressive pre-climax. To top it off, we have a terrific Siddharth giving his A-game. However, everything in between is a mess.

“Mayir-la kuda panakkaara mayir-ku dhan madhippu.”....“Kovapadradhu nalladhu dhan, aana kovapadradhukkum thagudhi venum.” These are two of the many lessons that Gunashekar a.k.a Guns (Siddharth), a young man from an underprivileged rural background, is forced to learn in following the normal, ethical route to ascend the social ladder. As he struggles to find his place in a new city, he questions if self-esteem and self-respect are the prices to pay for wealth in this world. He joins the cab company of the aforementioned Korean man as at least he gets to drive around BMWs and Mercedes.


Have you ever wondered what you’d do if you come across a bag full of money somewhere? Guns, having been pushed to the edge of life, chooses to go all Ryan Gosling’s Driverwhen one such opportunity comes his way, only to be sent back flying once again. Guns would soon realise that when life pushes you to a corner, the only way is forward. Through a well-staged and impressive choreographed action sequence, Guns realises that he can fight back if he chooses to and that he has been having an action hero within him all this while. But the result puts him in the crosshairs with a bunch of women traffickers who have kidnapped Mahalakshmi a.k.a Lucky (Divyansha Kaushik).


Guns inadvertently rescues Lucky, and we realise that they are both in similar circumstances. They are both castaway from normal life and they have no hope or wish to go back to their lives; as Lucky says, if the kidnappers are selling her to many men, her own father, a rich brat businessman, wants to sell her to a man by marriage for a good business deal. Lucky’s father, the Korean cabbie company baddie, the henchmen of the human traffickers search for the two who are wandering, seeking pleasure in the nomadic, in-the-moment hippie life. There’s also a hint of sexual tension between Lucky and Guns.