The promotional material for Vijay Deverakonda and Rashmika Mandanna’s Ranbaali made it abundantly clear what the film was going to deal with. The Madras famine of the 1800s, a sinister orchestration by the British Raj. But what we possibly walked into the theatre with was a tiny sense of expectation — to see what Sankrityan would do with this intense but complex chapter from India’s past. And we see a glimmer as early as the first scene. A mother gives birth to a child right outside her ancestral temple, only to hold a stillborn in her hands. Furious at the gods above, she demands he be given life. Of course he survives and goes on to be the fierce warrior Ranabaali. But not without a rider. The prodigal boy lives on borrowed time, and the film instantly becomes much more. Much more than documentation. Much more than a rote retelling of the past. But as the film begins, the illusion dispels.
There’s nothing really wrong with unearthing the past on screen. Especially a past that speaks of the insidious nature of colonisation and greed. Filmmakers have been capturing war and human malice for many moons. But what distinguishes a film from episodic podcasts or gritty documentaries? Ranabaali seems to forget the need to fill in this crucial gap from time to time.
Ranabaali opens around 1876 in Rayalaseema at the Singanamalla village, a god-fearing community, which is fairly untouched by the rising British intrusion. The village is earmarked by routine ritual offerings for the temple — which means slashing and killing isn’t just reserved for human beings. Even before the Brits enter the picture, Ranabaali (Deverakonda) is slashing throats and beheading thieves, descending in slow-mo on his beautiful horse Muni. He prances and dances along with a severed head and announces his full name — a regal mouthful, of course — with an exaggerated inflection any chance he gets.
The film gets a visual and narrative reprieve in the form of Jayamma (Mandanna), his coy but mighty wife who resists and rebels against his empty bravado. Mandanna and Deverakonda turn on the charm, even as the rest of the film struggles to steady itself.
Led by the smooth and bald-headed Arnold Vosloo, the Brits lay their eyes on Singanamalla as they tighten their grip on the cruel Laissez-faire policy, leaving millions of Indians to die. The film offers exhaustive depictions of these events to Ajay-Atul’s moving score, but beyond the story of a young girl and her mother forced to deal with the actions of irrational men, its effect is painfully sterile.
All the film needed was a moving human connection to keep its violence from tipping into exploitation. We see glimpses of what the film could’ve been in a child’s understanding of pain, a mother’s excruciating guilt. Sankrityan also surprises with solidly written moments of drama in the middle of all the bloodshed. With grain in short supply throughout the film, its visual treatment is particularly interesting. We first see it soaked in blood as the village does its annual ritual of the bull. But the next time this imagery returns on screen, it moves us.
A wife prays for her husband to be by her side as she endures labour pain, but when the moment finally arrives, it unfolds in a way no one could have anticipated. But all of this remains individual scenes, often steamrolled by the film's love for action and hyperbole.
Its predictable final act is painfully reminiscent of the kind of climax that has been doing the rounds ever since a blockbuster hit in 2025, leaving us to wonder why filmmakers feel compelled to follow trends at the expense of originality. The boy with the borrowed time can perhaps be a story for another time.