‘Ikka’ Review: Sunny Deol & Akshaye Khanna Face Off In a Solid Netflix Thriller

'Ikka' is a taut thriller with a strong hand and a number of fun surprises up its sleeve, writes Suchin Mehrotra.

Akshaye Khanna in a still from Ikka.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube)

It’s a clash between two of the great cinematic faces on the movies this week. In Netflix’s latest original film, Ikka, Sunny Deol goes up against Akshaye Khanna (sort of). Who called it Ikka and not 'Face-Off'?

The courtroom thriller brings Deol back to his Damini days, with a courtroom serving as an arena for him to scream justice at us and fight for the little guy. Director Siddharth P Malhotra’s (Hichki, We Are Family, Maharaj) film is loud, unsubtle, and armed with an emotion-splaining background score determined to do all the feeling for us and leave little to the imagination (or heart).

Despite its punishing duration, it’s effective. Uplifted by thunderous actors, Althea Kaushal’s well-plotted screenplay ensures that, when Ikka works, it really does.

Ikka opens on what appears to be a dead body (if you don’t start a thriller this way, rumour has it that Netflix kidnaps your family). A young woman (Akansha Ranjan Kapoor gets all of two scenes) is found fighting for her life after being flung out of a car on a Mumbai street late one night. The prime suspect is Shauryaman Gaur (a simmering, snarling Akshaye Khanna instantly uplifts the material), the spoilt son of a rich politician and industrialist who was seen driving into the night with the victim earlier that evening.

The case is offered to 'Mumbai’s best defence lawyer,' Arjun Mehra (Sunny Deol is in solid form). Arjun is the undefeated lawyer who’s built a spotless reputation for defending the little guy against the rich and powerful. I’m not sure how he can afford such a palatial Mumbai home and swanky office with a top law firm by only ever defending the innocent against the guilty and powerful, but okay.

A Triumph Of Turbo-Charged Stakes

Shauryaman, who has a history with Arjun, asks him to take on the case and defend him. Arjun refuses. It’s 'an open-and-shut case,' he says. All the evidence points towards the accused, who happens to be an entitled, philandering brat. Except when Arjun’s young daughter is diagnosed with late-stage leukaemia, only Shauryaman can help get the life-saving treatment she needs, for ludicrous reasons I’ll leave you to discover for yourself. Arjun is then forced to become everything he’s ever stood against.

At its best, Ikka is a triumph of turbo-charged stakes that sails on sheer narrative propulsiveness, bringing the tension and urgency of a solid race-against-time thriller. 

Sunny Deol in a still from Ikka.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube)

I enjoyed how the makers toy with the conventional courtroom thriller template, which usually involves the plucky, inexperienced underdog going up against the arrogant senior counsel defending the evil corporation. Here, it’s the sincere underdog public prosecutor, Madhura Banerjee (Tillotama Shome can do no wrong), against not an arrogant, heartless lawyer but a good man made to do 'bad' things.

To save the life of his daughter, Arjun is forced to defend a probably guilty man accused of rape and murder by resorting to the very dirty tactics and bullying that he’s made a career of fighting against.

Performance-wise, there’s a wasted opportunity here to see a reluctant bully of a lawyer constantly performing in the courtroom whilst hating his own actions. But we rarely see flashes of that reluctance in Deol.

Instead, the unsubtle writing gives us numerous scenes of him explaining his remorse at home to his wife (the always endearing Dia Mirza). Arjun spends his days belittling Madhura Banerjee in the courtroom and his evenings breaking down at the thought of what he’s had to do to save his daughter.

I like that the film acknowledges that the 'easy' and common defence in cases like this is the character assassination of the (female) victim, painting her as 'loose,' and that Arjun is consistently wrestling with crossing that line.

An Undying Aura Of Akshaye Khanna

The problem is that Malhotra’s film struggles to maintain the momentum it builds in its first half.

The narrative seems to fall asleep for a lengthy chunk around the halfway mark as we get a number of empty, dead scenes of characters repeatedly reminding us of what the stakes are.

The meat of the narrative—the tense courtroom sequences, the morally murky face-offs between Arjun and Madhura, and Arjun and Shauryaman behind closed doors—is repeatedly undercut by dry, uninteresting emotional scenes in a hospital of Arjun and his wife dealing with their daughter’s illness.

It’s no coincidence that these portions of narrative sagging are low on Akshaye Khanna, whose temperature-altering aura almost makes us forget the crime he’s accused of. Khanna can do more with parts of his face than many actors can do with their entire bodies. In his scenes with Deol, Ikka flirts with doing justice to the presence of both actors. Of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object.

Tilotama Shome in a still from Ikka

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube)

Ikka doesn’t quite join the ranks of the 'how-far-will-you-go-for-your-family' thriller hall of fame. But I like that it approaches it from a new angle, through the language of a courtroom drama. The film would certainly have benefited from some restraint. Still, somewhere in here is a tight, taut thriller with a strong hand and a number of fun surprises up its sleeve.

Ikka releases on Netflix on 10 July.

(Suchin Mehrotra is a critic and film journalist who covers Indian cinema for a range of publications. He's also the host of The Streaming Show podcast on his own YouTube channel. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)