‘Karthick’ has nothing new to offer (Kannada Film Review)

Film: Karthick; Director: Sathish Shetty; Cast: Karthick, Archana Gupta, Avinash, Sudha Belawadi, Venugopal, Raj Purohit, Kurigalu Sunil; Music director: John Warki; Rating: *

A boy from a family under debts, and a rich girl whose father is friends with the villain — “Karthick” has nothing new to offer. The film has many predictable sequences common to hundreds of films made in south Indian languages, including Kannada, and also in Hindi.

So many films have sequences of a rich and arrogant heroine coming to her village by train, missing out being escorted by her own people, and taken by the hero who had come to the same station to drop his mother. Such predictable sequences are in plenty in “Karthick”, named after its actor Karthick.

These sequences may not bring any smile to your face, but are sure to escalate boredom. The villain and his son’s idea to usurp the rich business tycoon’s property by indoctrination and creating a wrong impression about the hero is an age-old story line.

If you think an actor learns from his mistakes and loop holes in his debut film and shows some maturity in his next film, you may go wrong after seeing “Karthick”. It is Karthick’s second film. He is a Kannadiga hailing from Mumbai.

Frankly, his first film “Yuva” was much better than this bilge directed by Sathish Shetty from Mumbai who claimed to have experience of working in many Hindi films.

Shetty had written stories for Hindi films in the sixties and seventies enacted by the likes of Shashi Kapoor, Biswajit and Joy Mukherjee.

At least some good comedy and romantic sequences could have provided some relief, but the director surely lacks the creativity to include relief bound situations in the script. As far as the fights are concerned, Karthick was extremely good in “Yuva”, but here he shows only sparks of brilliance seen in “Yuva” where Cheetah Yagnesh Shetty was the fight choreographer.

Karthick and his mother live near a small river bed in a well-furnished house (a set created by the film’s art director) barely touched by any activity. Karthick’s father, who is dead, had run up debts after leading a rich life. But he and his mother want to keep away from the business that has ruined their lives.

Karthick remembers his childhood friend Nisha (Archana) who has grown as an arrogant daughter of a rich businessman Vijay Raj. Raj’s friend J.K. and his son are trying to cheat him through their wicked ideas.

Karthick meets Nisha and they get into a good bonding after realising their childhood relationship. But Raj opposes their courtship. J.K. and his son try to create a wedge between the two families who were close to each other many years ago. Raj agrees to marry off his daughter to J.K.’s son, but later realises his folly when he overhears J.K.’s wicked plans.

Finally, Karthick fights J.K. and his son to free Raj and Nisha. He marries Nisha in the end.

With such a predictable script, Shetty takes his film to a further low by his unimaginative direction. The ordinary camera work and uninspiring music dampens the film’s quality.

Karthick goes several steps down in his performance, which may be due to the director’s incompetence. Even Archana, who was much better in her previous two Kannada films “Circus” and “Lift Kodla”, is miserable in this film. Nothing much could be said about other artistes.

“Karthick” is a disaster from the word go. It may be good to avoid this film in these days when the World Cup live coverage viewing comes as a better alternative.