Kendasampige (Kannada)
Director: Suri
Cast: Manvitha Harish, Vicky, Prakash Belawadi
Suri’s Kendasampige has everything working for it. A well-made road movie, it is admirably crisp (only a little over 90 minutes), adequately dark and successfully thrilling. Even debutants Manvitha and Vicky perform their roles well.
The director takes two stories: Kagebangara and Ginimariya Kathe — which are seemingly unrelated and connects them well.
The first is a story about what happens to a huge sum of money that a corrupt team of policemen led by ACP Suryakanth (Prakash Belawadi) pocket from a drug deal and hide.
The second is a story of two lovers, Gowri (Manvitha) and Ravi (Vicky). Gowri’s mother is against the relationship and she contacts ACP Suryakanth to keep Ravi away from her daughter.
The beauty of Kendasampige is in the manner in which these two stories find each other. The minute they do, the road movie begins and we see the two lovers carve a charming map of Karnataka over a span of a week.
The truth, however, is that Suri does not re-invent the road movie. What he does instead is recreate a familiar one well. There are many elements in the film that a cinema-going audience would recognise as core elements of the genre. For example, the parts involving the chase, the predictable betrayers and even the volatile journey on the road. But the film works purely because of Suri’s narrative capabilities.
Gowri and Ravi are both from contrasting worlds. While Gowri is a slick city girl from Bengaluru, Ravi is a simple, wide-eyed boy from Mandya. Together, their romantic world is even more far-removed from the world of crime and deceit that they suddenly find themselves in. Suri understands these different prototypes well and crafts an engaging narrative.
The good guys are not without their fault lines and the bad guys, thankfully, are not melodramatically evil. However, Prakash Belawadi is rather casual for a scheming, calculative officer.
What Kendasampige adds to the expectedly dark road movie is Inspector Purandhar, a saviour police officer who looks out for the young lovers and opposes Suryakanth’s plans.
There are charming moments of laughter and romance that are carefully inserted amidst anxious junctures that further uplift the film. Both Manvitha and the independent, brave girl, Gowri, she plays in the film are refreshing, to say the least, and a happy addition to the kind of female characters in the current crop of films.
The camera work accentuates the slickness of the film. Thankfully, there are no forced and unrelated comedy sequences. The music composed by Harikrishna captures the mood of the film well and does not stand apart from the plot.
Suri is a good storyteller even if it is a story we can more or less predict. Kendasampige is definitely worth a watch.
