‘Ghaati’ Movie Review: Anushka Shetty Bears The Weight Of Tedious Writing in This Action-Drama

Cannabis bears the shape of various things in Krish Jagarlamudi’s Ghaati. It is found in small amounts, used to offer prayers for both the living and the dead, among a native community in the Eastern Ghats. It is medicine in the right hands — Anushka Shetty’s Sheelavathi is born to whiffs of the smoke in a meaningful scene, and poison in the wrong ones. It is a means to make ends meet for some and an eventual death in indignity for others. Ghaati is encased in such rich, bountiful ideas and metaphors. And on top of it, the film, on paper, subverts the male messiah trope by making Anushka Shetty the promised saviour. But Ghaati delivers nothing that its ideas so tantalisingly promise.

Sheelavathi and Desi Raju (Vikram Prabhu) make for an endearing couple in Ghaati. If he is fire, she is the ghee, someone rightly points out in the film. Connected by a bond as early as childhood, their romance is something that’s already established when we meet them. The film’s landscape, set on the border of Andhra and Odisha, adds freshness, even if the writing doesn’t cut too deep into the cultural richness of the ‘ghaati’ community. Like any film depicting biases, Ghaati too takes the time to show us the effects of systemic oppression, which pushes particular tribes into certain kinds of jobs. But what happens when the natives use this bias against their oppressors, and to their benefit? They smuggle cartons of cannabis on their bare back across the mountains. 

An underground cannabis mafia unfurls, and so does a Robinhood-esque tale. Ghaati, however, is not able to do its material any justice. This is painfully apparent when it shifts from being an unlikely small-town romance to a full-blown action drama. Loud and despicable villains — both brown and white — make their appearances terribly felt. Random bouts of screaming are what pass for villainy (Chaitanya Rao Madadi’s Kundula, a weed-snorting crime boss, heads the lot). And lest we forget, a lot of misogyny on the side. They are the kind of antagonists who torture a woman by stripping her and a man by thrashing him. Because, of course, “modesty” is the ultimate defeat for the woman. 

There is only so much endearing lead actors can salvage. Anushka Shetty’s Sheelavathi technically has all the markings of the formidable women Shetty has played in the past — including Devasena, Arundhati, and Bhaagamathie. Sheelavathi has a mind of her own, is staunchly independent romantically and professionally, and yet is reduced to somehow being a damsel in distress before getting her own messiah arch. Sheelavathi’s metamorphosis comes a little too late. And it is backed by writing that is much too frivolous to take her sudden transformation seriously. 

She mouths the dialogue that every male hero in such saviour redemption films has mouthed before, and incredibly thrashes scores of men who dare to cross her. While Shetty renders these scenes with a robust sincerity, the writing suffers from a lack of intent. Aside from a fun Raju Sundaram, the film also lacks memorable supporting characters to provide relief from the tedium. We’d love nothing but to watch Shetty crush some thuggies. But perhaps in a better film.