Maa Inti Bangaaram review: Guns, sickles, sarees and Samantha owning everything

Maa Inti Bangaaram movie review: Director Nandini Reddy's Maa Inti Bangaaram, starring Samantha Ruth Prabhu and Gulshan Devaiah, is a female-led commercial film with great action. It is also a film that proves women can headline an action drama and do it convincingly.

In Short

• Swarna returns to her in-laws seeking acceptance after eloping three years ago
• Her hidden past resurfaces, forcing her to protect the family
• The film frames domestic tension and action through a woman's perspective

An orthodox family preparing for a wedding. A couple who eloped three years ago returns to the family and their village, hoping for acceptance. The protagonist is worried if all will go well. Meanwhile, the protagonist’s past comes to haunt the family. And the character, backed by a massy background score, is ready to put her life on the line to protect the family. Sounds like a usual commercial drama, isn’t it? Now, picture a woman, in a saree, holding guns, and machetes and sickles, all for her family. That’s what Maa Inti Bangaaram is all about.

Swarna (Samantha) and her ‘green forest’ husband Anirudh (Diganth Manchale) arrive at her in-laws village home to attend her sister-in-law’s wedding. The couple is meeting their family for the first time in three years after getting married against their parents’ wishes. In an attempt to win the family’s acceptance, Swarna does everything to impress her new family.

Swarna is not your typical woman. She doesn't know how to cook or recite slokas during prayers.. In simple words, she’s not your ideal woman, let alone housewife. But, she’s smart and clever. She asks her childhood friend, who she grew up with in an orphanage, to come to the village, cook for her so she can pass it off as her own. Swarna may not know everything, but she knows how to get things done.

But when things seem to go her way, Swarna’s past comes to haunt her and her family. She confronts her fear to save her family, while coming clean to them about her past.

During one of the promotional events, director BV Nandini Reddy compared Maa Inti Bangaaram to Rajinikanth’s Baassha. And we know why when we watch the movie. One can draw parallels between both films and find many similarities. Both films centre on protagonists who yearn for family, and whose pasts end up disrupting their families' peace, finally culminating in saving them.

Where Maa Inti Bangaaram succeeds is in its presentation. For long, commercial cinema was all about men anchoring the plot and emerging out as the ideal one. It is refreshing to see a woman at the core, handling her life at home, while facing threats from a menacing villain (Gulshan Devaiah) with such ease.

Samantha, who has dabbled in action in her last few projects, has pushed the envelope in terms of stunts in Maa Inti Bangaaram. The action blocks are so brilliantly choreographed that every sequence will make you look at the screen and Samantha in awe.

Samantha, as Swarna, wants to lead a life that most women who are longing for a family, would do. Imagine a joint family setting where a grandmother who’d openly make a face every time you don’t know a basic thing. And the competition with a fellow sister-in-law, who the family seems to adore. And the entire set-up where women is pitted against each other. Swarna wants all of it, but at the same time, wants the family to accept her as it is. It is a process and that process is well documented in Maa Inti Bangaaram.

The story, written by Raj Nidimoru, is generic at its best. It is predictable and non-inventive, to say the least. However, where Maa Inti Bangaaram stands apart is in its presentation. Samantha embodied Swarna like it’s her second skin. Be it comedy, emotion or action, she aced it and outdid herself.

In an attempt to hype Samantha’s character, the men in the film get forgettable roles. They do become her allies, which is a nice directorial touch. Take, for example, her husband Anirudh’s (Diganth Manchale) role. He is a doctor, but remains only that. While the father-in-law’s character had a few redeemable lines, Anirudh or Swarna’s brother-in-law, who is a police officer, get crushed under the weight of Samantha’s role.

Coming to Gulshan Devaiah’s character, he plays an extremist who is often called a monster. While his unpredictability is his major character trait, he ends up becoming the most predictable character in the film. Maa Inti Bangaaram also felt stretched out beyond a point. The first half had several sequences built up to the final action. But, the action blocks in the second half felt underwhelming, as the pay-off wasn’t effective as promised.

Cinematographer Om Prakash’s frames captured the best of the village. Composer Santhosh Narayanan’s music did its best in elevating Samantha’s Swarna, especially in the action sequences.

Maa Inti Bangaaram takes a generic story, but lets Samantha flip the script on a commercial drama that has long been headlined, and beaten to death, by male heroes.

- Ends