'The Rise of Ashoka' movie review: Movie on hair mafia tangled in tropes

In a tonsuring centre run by a brutal Kutty Babji in a small village near Mysuru, human hair is precious.Babji makes sure to secure the tender every year and employs barbers belonging to the oppressed caste for meagre wages. If someone is suspected of ‘stealing’ hair, they are stripped naked and insulted. When asked for higher wages, they are killed. Babji is the kind who will go to any extent to procure hair, even dig open a grave. 

Enter Ashoka, with dreams of becoming a revenue officer. When he learns about the plight of his community, he tears (quite literally and stylishly) those dreams and wages a war against Babji. 

Sampath Maitreya plays Kutty Babji, who calls himself a ‘hair merchant’ and is supposedly a terrifying mafia don. But his weird accent and the scraggly thicket on his face makes him more laughable than menacing. For a movie which is about hair, both the hero and the villain sport ‘hair’ in the most creative ways possible. But it is not just Sampath’s character but most of the characters in the film feel unreal, and the narrative, superficial. And the dialogues? Let’s not even go there! 

For a film aimed at discussing caste, oppression and dissent, too much time is wasted on a love story, which is not even inter-caste, making the film one note and single layered, weighed down by masala movie tropes. And, what is with the excessive display of meat at the villain’s den? 

‘The Rise of Ashoka’ makes no social commentary and is like any other film using the rich vs poor (class) or a good vs evil conflict for the plot.