'Ten' movie review: An underwhelming sports drama

Ten

Kannada (Theatres)

Director: Karm Chawla

Cast: Vinay Rajkumar, Anusha Ranganath, Gopalkrishna Deshpande

Rating: 2.5/5

There is a formulaic template for sports dramas and unfortunately, Ten follows that. The Kannada film is from Karm Chawla, who makes his debut as a director after being the cinematographer for noted films like Ulidavaru Kandante, Kirik Party and Avane Srimannarayana.

Vinay Rajkumar plays an ambitious boxer. At a boxing institute, he gets into a tiff with his head coach, a plot turn we have seen in several sports dramas. It takes a life-changing event for the protagonist to mend his relationship with his coach, played by the dependable Gopalkrishna Deshpande. Anusha Ranganath, essaying the role of a bank employee, is the female lead.

How does the heroine influence the protagonist’s life? How many hurdles must he cross to achieve his goals of playing at the national and international levels? Watch the film to find out.

The romantic track is quite routine while the narration, for a sports drama, isn’t gripping. Many characters come and go with no reasons while one wishes the central characters were written better. One also wonders why the movie is named ‘10’. Except for the protagonist’s jersey number, the number 10 has nothing much to do as far the film’s theme or its conflicts are concerned.

Ten, despite some decent portions, is a patience-testing film as none of the filmmaking aspects come together nicely.

Vinay Rajkumar with films like Run Antony and Ananthu Vs Nusrath, has vouched for offbeat stories. Ten too appears promising on paper. But sadly, it ends up as a clone of several Indian sports drama. Ten, co-produced by Pushkara Mallikarjunaiah, had been in the making for a long time but it has ended up as a damp squib.