Akka review: Feisty female gangsters, matrilineal linkages, picturesque period settings, strong women leading from the front: can anything be better?
Turns out, not really. When it’s a Yashraj production, style is a given, and there’s plenty of that strewn around the strikingly shot Akka, with its sprawling homesteads and old rivalries and new contenders. What there’s not in such lush abundance, is substance: the plot, which takes its time getting to a tipping point by the fifth episode, at which point there’s a pause till presumably the second part of the show, that keeps giving way to gratuitous spurts of violence and superfluous stylistic flourishes.
The timelines flashes back and forth 800 years in the past and the 1980s, as we are led into fictional Pernuru, somewhere in South India, where women rule, with a set of stringent rules that they have created. They are allowed to take lovers, but not husbands; girl children are worshipped as are the kul-devis, which watch over the forests and lakes and the people. Rough justice is the name of the game, and there’s no fury than a woman scorned.
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When Rudra (Radhika Apte) shows up on the shores of Pernuru, she throws down the gauntlet. She’s here to take over, a clarion call that doubles up a wake-up call for the head of the clan Bhavani (Keerthy Suresh), and a whole host of lusty matriarchs (Tanvi Azmi) and young warriors (Anjali Patil).
So far, all right, even though Apte’s choice of attire — slinky gowns and oversized shades look like a throwback to bad Bollywood ladies of yore — makes her stick out like a sore thumb in a place where the other women are always dressed as if they are about to go off to a wedding, a christening, or a celebration that involves loud incantations to the devi, and her acolytes, all very Kantaresque.
The men, in a series like this, know their place. Anshuman Pushkar plays Amar, a clansman who finds himself on the right side of the relentlessly aggressive Rudra; another extended family member Nanda (Vishak Nair) is in love with Bhavani, and wants nothing less than marriage.
By the time you sort out who’s who, and all the names of the different regions that are at war, but will predictably come together to put up a fight against the outsiders — pragmatically, the British overlords, and the desi sarkaari types that follow, are told that they will cooperate as long as they each stay in their lane — it’s taken up too much mindspace and patience. Why did no one think of a family tree which we could refer to every time a name and place comes up?
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Also, just what is it with depicting horrific violence on screen? I cannot unsee the burnt body of a child (yes, a spoiler, fully intended) arranged on the sea-shore for joint horrified reactions which are then turned into bloody face-offs between the contestants.
Apte gets a lot of screen time, but comes off familiar. It is Keerthy Suresh, whose brief but impactful presence in Dorothy lent that film a touch of much-needed grace, both powerful and radiant here, carries this show in and as Akka. If only the rest matched up: instead of flipping the male gangster tropes, with its insertion of matru-satta in place of pita-and-putra, it comes off more as a glossy Gangs of Kantarapura, minus true grit. Will the second part fix these niggles? We’ll see.
Akka cast: Keerthy Suresh, Radhika Apte, Tanvi Azmi, Anshuman Pushkar, Monica Tanwar, Vishak Nair, Poornima Indrajith, Anjali Patil, Mahesh Manjrekar
Akka director: Dharmaraj Shetty
Akka rating: 2 stars