Sunny Deol returns as a lawyer. But surprise, surprise! He seems to be defending Akshaye Khanna, whose smirk tells us he’s most probably guilty. Tillotama Shome pitches in as the public prosecutor, and the resulting mix of an old template with new twists just about qualifies as a comforting home-watch. That’s the quick review. A more detailed analysis follows, and it may contain spoilers.
Ikka is an old-fashioned star vehicle where Sunny Deol plays a character named after one of his most iconic characters: Arjun. There’s also a “dhai kilo ka haath” joke delivered by, of all people, Tillotama Shome. The other big star in this courtroom drama, directed by Siddharth P Malhotra, is Akshaye Khanna, who plays a super-rich politician’s son. His name is Shauryaman, and when he walks up to the stand to make his statement, he gets big music as well as the slo-mo treatment. This sort of thing used to be great fun on the big screen. Now, it’s on OTT. As they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same. The medium may be new, but the things we turn to for a comfort watch are apparently still the good, old templates. But apart from must-haves like the last-minute witness and the last-second piece of evidence, the writers Althea Kaushal and Mayank Tewari do have something new up their sleeve.
The newness comes from the moral ambiguity. Arjun is introduced as the “unbeatable lawyer in the city” and someone who’s always on the side of the innocent – but why does he take up Shauryaman’s case when the latter is accused of sexual assault and attempt to murder? Doesn’t he know that rich men in these movies are almost always guilty? Or does he know something we don’t, and is Shauryaman not guilty? There’s something else we would not find in older films in this genre. Arjun is the defense lawyer, not the public prosecutor, and he is very well-off. And he enters murky ethical territory when he defends Shauryaman. Let’s just say there’s an interesting exchange of favours between the two men – and no, it’s not something as simple as money. Arjun and Shauryaman have a complicated past, and there’s a woman involved: Arjun’s wife, played by Dia Mirza.
Meanwhile, Tillotama Shome plays Madhura, the utterly middle-class public prosecutor who takes the bus to court. It’s nice to see this high priestess of art cinema in a big mainstream movie. Madhura is the underdog in this David-versus-Goliath case. She has a daughter. She finds herself consoling another mother, the one whose daughter’s case she has taken up. Arjun has a daughter, too – and like in Drishyam 3, these relationships play out in interesting ways. They may not affect the plot directly, but they show how courtroom cases have a life far beyond the courtroom and how they can invade your own home. In Kaagaz Ke Phool, a gossip magazine publishes news about the filmmaker-protagonist’s supposed affair with the leading lady of his latest movie. And his daughter is teased about this by her hostelmates. Here, the scene is more politically pointed. Arjun’s daughter is told by a schoolmate that she should be ashamed that her father is defending a rapist. Even kids have sharp opinions today.
The story plods along in a generic but comforting way, in a genre that could be called “OTT Style”. We get star performances from Sunny and Akshaye and actorly performances from Tillotama and Dia, and there are just enough surprises to keep us watching. The strength of Ikka comes from our expectations. We know that a leading man like Sunny Deol has to find a way to uphold justice. But we also know that, in this courtroom, he seems to be doing something shady for personal gains. The way these contradictions are resolved is the reason to keep watching through all the twists and turns, some of which are reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution. There is genuine suspense about the way the film will end. I wish the makers had had more confidence in the material and had stripped away the melodrama of, say, mothers telling Arjun that he has fallen in their eyes. But like I said, it’s the OTT Genre. It’s an old format with just enough that’s new. I suppose that’s just enough for Ikka to qualify as an easy home-watch.
