Bakasuran A Dangerous Film On Dangers  Online

Bakasuran (Prime Video)

Rating: **

I so  want to start this review  by saying Bakasuran(Tamil)  means well. The  concerns regarding  sexual harassment online seem genuine.But producer-writer-director Mohan G’s execution(pun intended) is  so crude and amateurish that all the  good intentions get washed in an acid rain.

It’s like being invited to  a bachelors’ party  only to discover drag queens  dragging down the fun quotient. The vigilante played by Dhanush’s  elder brother  Selvaraghavan  looks so creepy it actually  seems  he is   a  sheep  in wolf’s clothing.

Selvaraghavan last seen helping his  screen  stepsister Keerthy Reddy get rid of her  rapists systematically in Saani  Kaayidham is  here on his own, nabbing  academic  perverts who are responsible  for his daughter’s sexual  harassment  and rape.

The “execution” is  crude from the start when a teacher is seen  trying to  take advantage of a hapless  underage  girl. The language used(“take  off your, let me caress your  virgin body”) by the rapist is nauseating. It  feels like  rape twice-over.This is not how films about rape are  effective. This is  where  Selvaraghavan’s character Rajasekaran barges in,drags the twisted teacher  to the   ground and  rips  him into two, like they  did in the Mahabharat, we are told.

 The mythological  allusions  are  sprinkled all across the brackish narrative, like  spicy add-ons to a bland overcooked pizza. This is a film that believes in pumping up the melodrama  until it bursts open at the seams.

While  Rajasekaran  gets bestial with all those who harmed his  daughter , in a parallel  plot, an investigative officer  Arul(Natarajan  Subramaniam) whose niece Ramya has committed  suicide  after being sexually blackmailed(yes,every family in the film seems  to have a daughter, and they all fall prey to online mischief) is on the prowl trying to decode  the  logic behind the trail of brutal killings.

The flashbacks are  particularly stiff at the joints, with the men  behaving like drugged predators and a woman with short hair, a tight skimpy blouse with a tattoo visible, a billowy saree and  cigarettes  on her  painted lips, acts so stereotypically in-character,  it feels like  a propaganda  piece on predatory  behaviour.

If  subtlety is your  scene then I  suggest  you stay as far away  from Bakasuran as  possible. The film’s crudity level is  so steep, it feels  like  an excuse to unleash a torrent  of misogyny masquerading as  concern for what  the  phone  can do to a girl child.

Why  not the male  chidren?  They are the ones watching porn and  getting ideas, And by  simply removing phones  from children’s reach, are we going to  solve the very urgent  issue  of  sex crime? It’s like blaming the weapon for all the killings in the world.You can  remove the phone  from impressionable  hands, but what about the images of sexual fantasy that float in the mind?

 Bakasuran  has  no answers. Only the questions on  the rise in sex crimes. And very  crudely  posed.