‘Dacoit’ movie review: A simmering old-school romance led by Adivi Sesh and Mrunal Thakur

Dacoit movie review: Adivi Sesh and Mrunal Thakur lead a romantic thriller blending old-school love with social commentary.

Dacoit: A Love Story keeps its biggest surprises under wraps, even as its team amped up pre-release promotions. Directed by Shaneil Deo and led by Adivi Sesh and Mrunal Thakur, the Telugu-Hindi bilingual is, at its heart, an emotional love story with an Indian ethos, told through a Western lens. The emphasis on “at its heart” is deliberate — embedded within is a distinctly old-school romance that nods to cinematic tropes of the past, hoping to resonate with a swipe-era audience.

For that to land, the writing of both characters and subplots needs to hold. Sesh and Shaneil, who share screenplay credits, pack the film with layered, often complex characters. Threads of possible deceit and double-crossing keep the narrative engaging at key moments. While a few characters verge on being one-note, the complexity of the central figures ultimately works in the film’s favour.

When the film reveals all its cards towards the end, some of the early lines in the love story, initially seeming routine, acquire new meaning. Screenplay supervisor Abburi Ravi, who also writes the Telugu dialogues, revisits certain lines through the film, allowing them to gather emotional weight as the narrative unfolds.

More than the thin plot, it is the non-linear storytelling that lends Dacoit its intrigue. The 152-minute film wastes little time, building momentum from the opening credits. The whir of windmills across the Andhra–Karnataka border, captured in ultra-wide frames by cinematographer Danush Bhaskar, contrasts sharply with the gloom of a prison cell where Hari Das (Adivi Sesh) is introduced. The camera lingers on his ‘J’ tattoo — a nod to his Juliet, Saraswathy (Mrunal Thakur) — as he holds back tears. What follows establishes Hari’s duality: irreverent in public, yet vulnerable in solitude or among those he trusts.

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Set in 2021, in the aftermath of the second lockdown, the narrative travels back to 2005. The sun-scorched landscape becomes a character in itself. Much like last week’s Telugu film, Biker, Dacoit benefits from staging its drama in real locations rather than relying heavily on sets or VFX.