On demand: "Kantara: A Legend"

2022's runaway hit Kantara: A Legend was the Kannada industry recalibrating the mythological drama that's long been central to Indian storytelling; part horror movie, part Marxist social study, with punch-ups, power chords, pharmaceuticals and pyrotechnics besides, it found writer-director-star Rishab Shetty throwing the kitchen sink at the screen in ways that paid off big time commercially, but which struck this onlooker as creatively hit-and-miss. In a Malickian prologue, a restless king is promised happiness if he gives up the land he rules over and instead submits to the protection of one Panjurli (Naveen Bondel), a pop-eyed, shirtless, endlessly shouting demigod, which is a bit like putting all your trust in, say, Keith Allen. (But hey: whatever works.) A brief flashforward to 1970 shows the demigod (or a descendant thereof) seeing off a landlord who fatally oversteps his boundaries; in 1990, where the bulk of the film takes place, the same verdant kingdom comes under renewed threat from the landlord's son. Much of the first half, however, is a rambunctious portrait of rural life that finds the local men - headed by Shetty's burly Shiva - engaging in buffalo racing, boar-hunting and boozing, and retreating to a treehouse whenever their women come looking for them. While they're overgrown teenagers, essentially - an Eastern equivalent of Homer Simpson and his drinking buddies - they're very much plugged into their immediate environment, and forced to defend this turf anew not just from the predations of grasping landlords but from brutish representatives of the police, cracking down on their historically approved right to roam.

Covid had to have been one influence: this was one of several South Indian post-lockdown smashes - including the first Pushpa and the second KGF movie - which would have started shooting earlier than most because it was mostly shot outdoors, and Arvind S. Kashyap's cinematography revels in the great natural beauty of the Karnakata locations. (The title translates into English as Mysterious Forest.) After two long years in which the rest of us were mostly shut away indoors, some part of the film's success can be attributed to how expansive that production is, both visually and in spirit; presented with the film's strong element of pantomime make-believe, you could convince yourself that the world hadn't just been through a deadly pandemic. Kantara is big but basic, though, particularly when set against the filigreed detail and dramatic nuance of Mani Ratnam's Ponniyin Selvan films, the first of which opened on the exact same day. Here, it's just goodies versus baddies, and there are places where the prevailing rowdiness turns rough: an ungallant sight gag about a wife with protruding teeth, a sniggering romantic subplot that sees Shiva pinching and spying on sweetheart Leela (Sapthami Gowda). The mythology dates to the Middle Ages; some of the masculinity does, too. To Shetty's credit, Leela is one of the few South Indian heroines of recent times who gets something semi-interesting to do: as a trainee on the police force, she's caught between factions, and eventually an outcast in her own community. Yet this subplot kicks in at the point where Shiva's behind bars - best place for him, some will say - and the film goes a little flat dramatically, waiting for something to kick everybody into the final confrontation. So it's a mixed bag rather than an obvious franchise-starter: as with the first Pushpa, I found it hard to much warm to, and wondered whether this was one of those regional hits that don't travel especially well. The scuttling Panjurli, with his painted face and signature scream ("Whooah!") is a terrific, distinctive spook; one of this first film's failings is that I ended up wanting more of him and rather less of Shetty's bumbling bumpkins.

Kantara: A Legend is currently streaming on Prime Video; a prequel, Kantara: Chapter 1, is now playing in selected cinemas.