‘The Ghost’ movie review: Nagarjuna’s actioner is slick, but misses the bullseye

Films that are solid on paper and bland in execution sometimes manage to leave a lingering aftertaste with all their ‘could-have-beens’ to ponder about. An hour into Nagarjuna’s festival release The Ghost, I was settling for a film that would end up doing just that, but it fails even in that respite. Praveen Sattaru’s action-drama is a case of multiple misfires from point-blank range, and there’s very little to take back.

I say point-blank because it feels like The Ghost tries to be two different films at once; a rogue-cop-on-a-revenge-spree actioner, as well as a family drama about protecting a child, but it comes close to only getting one of them right.

The film begins by introducing us to Vikram (Nagarjuna) and Priya (Sonal Chauhan), Interpol officers who kill bad guys for dinner and make love for dessert; yes, every mission cuts away to cheery, romantic fun on a yacht. We soon realise that not all is okay with Vikram and that, after chasing him for very long, the ghosts of his past are catching up to him. A case of collateral damage during a mission pushes him off the edge, and he vows to end all organised underworld criminals. An extended two-hour cut of Vikram dealing with his past, and slicing gangsters with his katana sword could have been a fun outing, but that is not this film.

The narrative then jumps five years after his vow when Vikram’s long-estranged sister Anu (Gul Panag) reconnects asking for his help. An unknown gang threatens to kill Anu and her daughter Aditi (Anikha Surendran), and a whole new world of corporate politics opens up. Much of these portions seem like a rehash of tried-and-tested themes and therein begins a big dip in engagement. Even when it pulls you into an emotional flashback about what made Vikram and Anu drift apart for 20 years, you end up wondering about why they both look absolutely the same — despite the 20-year gap — and why that gap had to be so long?!

From beginning to end, the film consistently manages to raise our expectations of redemption, only to gloriously kill it instantly. A high-speed car chase in the first act has both skilfully-choreographed action shots and routine showy camera movements in equal parts. The realism it shows off and the solemnity it builds through an action sequence instantly becomes a joke when you notice that Priya has saved her superior’s contact in her smartphone as ‘Interpol Head’. Add dialogue expositions, a lack of convincing emotional setups for payoffs, and many cliched twists to the mix, and the film becomes quite a tedious affair.

Refusing to settle down as an average film, The Ghost once again ups the notch with a fairly engaging action sequence in its third act, only to kill it with glaring loopholes and remind us of how much potential it has ended up squandering. In retrospect, an all-hell-let-loose action fest akin to John Wick would have been a better film. In fact, there is a direct tribute to Keanu Reeves’ now-iconic character via a scene inspired by the famous ‘pencil’ scene.

But more than John Wick, The Ghost should have been Nagarjuna’s Vikram Hitlist’of sorts (the superhit Kamal Haasan-starrer). I say this for many reasons. Nagarjuna forayed into the Telugu industry with Vikram in 1986, the same year when Kamal released his spy film Vikram in Tamil. 36 years later, once again we have a Kamal Haasan starrer named Vikram (in which he is referred to as ‘Ghost’), and we get an action film named The Ghost from Nagarjuna (in which he plays Vikram). There are many such happy on-screen coincidences between the two films as well, but only one of them seems to have hit the bullseye. Despite having an automatic — and a stylish, swashbuckling action backdrop — in his arsenal, director Praveen brings a blunt sword to a gunfight, and the result is a colossal mess.

The Ghost is currently running in theatres