Bagheera

Dr Suri's 2024 Kannada film is about an honest policeman who despairs at corruption and violence. He becomes a masked vigilante and starts targeting both criminals and crooked colleagues. The script is by Prashanth Neel, which set the film's commercial identity. The hard, dark action style that has come forward in Kannada cinema in recent years applies here too: a low colour palette, direct violence, a hero who barely speaks. Sriimurali leads. The action is well staged, particularly the sequences in darkness. But the film never questions justice delivered outside the law and presents the hero's methods as entirely justified, so the genre's known problem stands here as well. Who it's for: those who like the new generation of Kannada action cinema. Who it's not for: viewers who want to avoid heavy violence; the film holds on its fights and its killings.