Haricharan Pudipeddi
Chennai, 18 Jul 2020 0:09 IST
The film follows the story of Nandini, played by Ragini Prajwal, a law graduate who files a police complaint of gang-rape against three well-connected men.
Raghu Samarth’s Law, which happens to be the first mainstream Kannada film to be released on an OTT platform, has much in common with another recent direct-to-OTT release, the Tamil court drama Ponmagal Vandhal. In both films, the protagonist is a rape survivor and argues her own case in court. If it was Jyotika in Ponmagal Vandhal, it’s debutante Ragini Prajwal in Law.
While Ponmagal Vandhal wasn’t a great film, it did not disappoint the viewer either. Unfortunately, you can’t say the same for Law, which is a terrible legal drama which makes a mockery of the genre.
The film follows the story of Ragini Prajwal as Nandini, a law graduate who files a police complaint of gang-rape against three well-connected men. She goes on to argue her own case in court, but, sadly, the character is so poorly written that you can never take her seriously.
Though you want to laud the character’s intent to boldly fight for justice, the poor writing lets the whole purpose down. Except for Nandini, there isn’t a single character in the film worth talking about. As a legal drama, Law is a joke; even otherwise, it hardly makes an impact as it takes its audience for granted.
You can hardly take the court scenes seriously. The film talks about sexual crimes but rarely do you feel anything for the victims, including Nandini, thanks to the distracting treatment. Worse, the film tries to include comedy in the court scenes. Showing little sensitivity to the tale of a rape survivor, the makers seem to think it is all right to lighten the mood with some bad jokes. The scenes between Mukhyamantri Chandru as the judge and his wife, who calls him on his phone while he is in court listening to arguments in the gang-rape case, are plain stupid.
Law has absolutely nothing working for it, and that’s putting it mildly. It makes you wonder what made Puneeth Rajkumar, who bankrolled the terrific investigative thriller Kavaludaari last year, bet on this project so confidently. Though Law has an interesting idea at its core, it tries to be a clever film and fails miserably.
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