It’s after this that the movie falters for a stretch — Ammu is conflicted, coping with the rift between the 2 males inside her husband — the lover she imagines actually exists, and the monster. She thinks she will eliminate the latter when she showers him with love. However as a result of we all know this can be a doomed endeavor, the escalation of abuse turns into troublesome to sit down by. And but, one can’t assist however recognise the abuse — we now have all heard of it someplace, socially, or within the information. The Nice Indian Kitchen (2021) dissected custom to reveal oppressive patriarchy — Ammu doesn’t fairly do that, and it’s doable most will stroll away from the movie saying “Oh sure, dangerous males like that exist, we’ve heard of them”, relatively than study the air they breathe and the water they drink for indicators of toxicity.
When she encounters Prabhu, a homicide convict, on the police station, Ammu begins to see a means out, and that is when the movie turns into an efficient, rooted thriller after the unevenness of the previous drama. Bobby Simha is great as Prabhu, and the writing on this stretch can also be insightful — when Ravikanth tells Bobby to scrub bathrooms in trade for going simple on him, the movie means that home abuse and sophistication/caste-based violence each emanate from the identical entitled privileged urge to dehumanise, to dominate, to get pleasure from the subservience and the discount of one other. The burgeoning bond between Ammu and Prabhu is a reprieve from the ugliness of the central relationship, as are the couple of scenes with frequent comedian actor, Raghu Babu.
