Buckaasura is an absolutely painful watch

Director: Navneeth Kumar

Language: Kannada

Cast: V Ravichandran, R J Rohith, Kavya Gowda

Rating: 1.5/5

'Karvva', a horror flick released in 2016, which faced initial hiccups had turned out a hit after word of mouth drew large crowds.

Director Navneeth Kumar is back with a new film, this time with an interesting title — Buckaasura. The film generated much curiosity on whether the director has succeeded in recreating the magic.

Does the mythological character Bakasura has anything to do with this film, as the title played on the word, was another question that gnawed on the mind.

All your curiosity will wane a few minutes into the film. An unsuccessful lawyer Aarya (R J Rohit) wins a couple of cases in no time, one of them being a high-profile case in which he helps to get the brother of an MLA acquitted in a rape case.

As he rises to fame he gets a call from a flamboyant businessman (Ravichandran), head of the Chakravarty group of companies (V Ravichandran), to join him as a legal adviser. After a meeting, the business tycoon starts assigning many tasks to Aarya, which will bring him huge amounts of money.

While this is an attempt to establish the protagonist as a greedy and amoral lawyer, the chain of events in this regard are so lackadaisically constructed and filmed; an absolute amateurishness is evident on screen. The courtroom arguments are so childish and primitive that it makes one want to run out of the theatre.

Then there are other tasks which are preachy but silly; courtroom arguments which grow increasingly childish; a blast case trial introduced without an iota of seriousness; and experiences of horror for the protagonist's girlfriend which grow more absurd by the scene.

The story is hung on events that are repetitive in nature. A forced fight scene and an over-used comedy track — where a judge gets irritated because one of the lawyers speaks only Kannada without mixing any English words (though he mixes words from other languages freely) — only adds to the pain of a viewer.