2.5 Stars (out of 4)
The courtroom drama Ikka (“Ace“) is billed as a tense showdown between veteran actors Sunny Deol and Akshaye Khanna, and in that regard, it delivers. With a different directorial focus, Ikka could have been more than that. An intriguing premise goes unexplored in favor of an approach that is broad and shallow.
Deol plays undefeated celebrity defense attorney Arjun Mehra, nicknamed “Ikka” for his penchant for playing his key evidence in dramatic, last-minute fashion. He and his wife Avantika (Dia Mirza) share a 13-year-old daughter, Samaira (Daria Bedi). The girl is diagnosed with leukemia, which is treatable with a bone marrow transplant.
Meanwhile, Arjun is hired to defend Shourya (Khanna) — son of a wealthy politician — for the attempted murder of a young woman named Soma (Akansha Ranjan Kapoor), who is alive but unconscious. Arjun initially refuses, due to a long-standing conflict between the men, but he relents because he needs Shourya to donate his bone marrow to Samaira. Why? Shourya is Samaira’s biological father! He dumped Avantika when she refused to get an abortion, and Arjun married her instead, raising Samaira as his own.
The soapy setup is amplified by a heavy-handed Julius Packiam score that doesn’t trust the audience enough to draw its own emotional conclusions. Transitions between tense scenes and light-hearted ones are awkward as is, and the overwrought score makes them even more so.
Another way in which Ikka is heavy-handed (in a good way) is it’s pro-woman point of view. Arjun’s main moral conflict in his approach to how he litigates the case is whether or not to use Soma’s social media account — complete with photos of her drinking alcohol and posing for photos with men — against her. He doesn’t want to tarnish her image in order to win, even if his own daughter’s life is on the line. The movie spends a lot of time on this plot point, really emphasizing how repugnant victim-blaming is.
There are related themes that are brought up but aren’t explored as much as they could’ve been. Samaira is taunted by some classmates because her father is defending “that rapist.” It would have been great to have a scene where Samaira and her father talk about violence against women and legal rules versus moral ones — even better if Samaira copped a bit of age-appropriate attitude with her dad. Instead, the plot point is dropped after Samaira says that she defended her dad’s reputation offscreen.
Fans watching Ikka for tense scenes between Sunny Deol and Akshaye Khanna will not be disappointed. Deol pounds his fists on the table and shouts. There are multiple shots of Khanna scowling and walking in slow motion — a shot popularized in Dhurandhar that filmmakers will struggle to resist going forward.
Tillotama Shome plays the prosecutor opposing Arjun, Madhura Banerjee. Shome is as reliable a performer as there is, and she does a fine job here, even if she’s asked by director Siddharth P. Malhotra to make her expressions a bit more obvious to match the bold energy of the men.
Dia Mirza spends the film acting circles around everyone else in the cast. She plays her role straight and absolutely nails it, lending gravity to all her scenes. Had everyone in Ikka been encouraged to take the same approach to their performances, the film might have felt more substantial and less pandering.
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