Review of Kantara Chapter 1

(Kannada movie released in Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, Bengali, English and Spanish)

The much anticipated and hyped prequel to the highly successful Kantara has released today in many languages and it has, by far, lived up to the high expectations.   The spell bound climax and superb acting and direction by Rishab in Kantara has taken that movie and expectation on prequel, Kantara Chapter 1 to dizzy heights. 

While Kantara is more in line of Pushpa, the cat and mouse game between Hero and the police officer and zamindar trying to grab forest land and exploiting the tribal laborer prequel deals more into the mythological aspect of the forest and forest god and belief of the tribes protecting it. 

There is a egoist king (Jayaram) who lies low after his father gets killed in pursuit of God’s forest, his wayward alcoholic and womaniser son (beautiful played by Gulshan Devaiah) and his pretty daughter (played by Rukmini) who falls for the hero Berme, who is the protector of the tribe and the God’s forest from the king and another tribal gang.  So compared to Kantara, the prequel has a larger canvass, characters and producer directors have gone for a grand scale.  

For some strange reasons Rishab, seems to be inspired by popular movies, in Kantara if it was Pushpa in Kantara 1 it is Maniratnam’s PS1, in the initial over one hour of romance and comical elements.    But its so long that the movie gets dragged till interval and looked going off the track.   But the from action scene at interval bang and entire post interval the movie picks up and races leading to fantastic climax, Rishab pulling another spell bound performance as man possessed.  

What worked for Kantara 1.   In an era, full of CAG and VFX effects, it comes as a great relief that major portion of the movie was shot in stunning locales in forest, the beautiful traditional sets, fire torches and costumes.   The action scenes are lavishly mounted and very well executed under the direction of Indian and foreign stunt directors.    Though there will be unfair comparison with climax action scenes of Bahubali, but the action scenes are well executed in their own right with the budget at their disposal.  

As far as acting is concerned, its director and actor Rishad Shetty stands out.   Though in the first half he allowed Jayaram, Gulshan Devaiah and Rukmini to walk away with meaty roles, he picked himself up post interval and peaked in the climax and again proved that he only could pull off such intense scenes like in kantara.    Jayaram was very good as the King, Gulshan was suited the role of spoilt prince to the T,  Rukmini was beautiful and full of confidence and control.  

Music by Ajaneesh Loknath was top class, the BGM, the use of Kannada folk songs at appropriate places was brilliant.    Cinematography by Arvind S. Kashyap is captivating and infusing life to the proceedings.  

If the pre interval romantic and comedy track is trimmed to 30 minutes and over all if the movie was trimmed to 2 hours 20 minutes it would have been more racy and interesting specially to non-Kannada and non-South Indian audience.    But overall Kantara Chapter 1 has not disappointed and yet another sincere effort by Director and Actor Rishab Shetty.

Thanks to the hype, it was reported to have mopped Rs. 65 crores on the first day and if it can hold it till the first weekend, it could easily make Rs. 400-500 crores and if that happens that will be another success story from Kannada industry at a PAN India level.   

First it was the stupendous success of animation movies Mahavatar Narasimha, last month Telugu movie Mirai, with roots in Hindu mythology and history has made over Rs. 200 crores and now we have Kantara, another movie rooted in Kannada tradition, forest God and tribal believes.   While Bollywood is busy pushing pro-Muslim and anti Hindu narrative, from Zanjeer Deewar days to Pathan,  South India movies are coming out with commercial movies rooted in Hindu mythology, thick and fast and braking all box office records and created it as a trend.    

S. Prabhakar

2.10.2025