‘Landlord’ Movie Review: A Land Rights Drama That Gets Lost In Melodrama

On its surface, Jadeshaa K. Hampi’s Landlord details a land conflict drama. A ruthless landowner (Raj B Shetty) carries the dignity and the property of his labourers by the neck. When the villagers rally, with some help from a reliable constable and her hardy father (Vijaya Kumar), a fight between the haves and the have-nots begins. But the treatment of the film, bookended with garish visuals, exaggerated chest-thumping and contrived plotting, is such that a simple land rights story drowns in a loud, cliched bloodfest.

The film unfolds in Karnataka’s Hulidurga, where there’s no place for law and order. Landlords assert power over labourers by holding panchayat sessions under their belts. Raj B Shetty runs one such stronghold in the village, terrorising the town's only police station into submission. Putting up a fight against this persecution is Bhagya (Rithnya Vijay), a constable who wants to clean up the village, with endless help from her father Raachappa (Vijaya Kumar). 

Landlord depicts the atrocities of systemic casteism with excruciating detail. We see it through the slippers that are kicked off before entering premises, food served in separate utensils, and occupational segregation. While the film has its heart in the right place, a lot of this seems almost like a quick checklist instead of tugging depictions with real sentiment. This is also because the film switches from one extreme emotion to the other. We see Devi (Shishir Baikady) mouth lines about his right to be paid and get thrashed for it in one scene, and see him make googly eyes at Bhagya the next.

There’s also a lot going on in Landlord, a busyness that chips away at its focus. A plotline involving Raj B Shetty’s concubine is super uncomfortable to watch, and tells us nothing we can’t predict. Shetty, who tries his best to make us hate him, is convincing as the dreadful lowlife. But the film’s dialogue, which is often designed to rhyme for effect, doesn't do his energy any justice. “We wash our stains with blood, not water,” he says at one point, a line that’s supposed to speak depths about his devilry. Raachappa rhymes too, “What is needed here is not compensation but constitution”, being what passes for the film’s pivotal punch dialogue.

Vijaya Kumar plays Raachappa with so much conviction and naïveté that it sticks out in a film that’s all noise. Underneath all of the clangour, Landlord has some solid moments that could've worked in a better script. We have a mother who swears off speaking to her son until he fulfils his promise, a father who drops his knife to give his daughter the education he never had, and a man whose dream of owning two acres keeps slipping away from him. These are ideas that never get a chance to develop in a film that settles for middling melodrama.