Balticomes accompanied with the tag of a ‘sports action film’, with Kabaddi being the sport in the spotlight. For a while in the beginning, debutant filmmaker Unni Sivalingam appears to be keen on living up to this tag, serving us some intensely fought and tastefully shot Kabaddi matches. But by the halfway point, Kabaddi gets firmly pushed to the background, only for a glimpse of it to be shown in the epilogue.
This has partly to do with how the lives of the four protagonists (Shane Nigam, Shanthnu Bhagyaraj, Shiva Hariharan, Jeckson Johnson), all Kabaddi players, transform after their initial successes on the arena. Kabaddi almost turns out to be an excuse to market it as a sports film, when for most parts it is a run-of-the-mill action film on youngsters unknowingly getting engulfed in the shady world of goons and money lenders. On the other hand, their mastery of the sport becomes an excuse for several action sequences outside the arena.
A still from ‘Balti’
The action, which comes in regular intervals and for extended periods of time, papers over the cliche-ridden plot and predictable turn of events, but only to a certain extent. The debutant director certainly has a flair for mounting mass action, although the same cannot be said about his writing, which is patchy and emotionally distant. The bond between the four youngsters, partly shaped by their love for the sport, and the shifts that the relationships take when they slip into the world of crime, forms the core of the story, but this does not move us as it is supposed to do.
Balti (Malayalam)
Director: Unni Sivalingam
Cast: Shane Nigam, Shanthnu Bhagyaraj, Preethi Asrani, Selvaraghavan, Alphonse Puthren, Poornima Indrajith, Shiva Hariharan, Jeckson Johnson
Runtime: 154 minutes
Storyline: Four friends, all Kabaddi players, are drawn into the world of crime, where the stakes are higher than they imagined
Parts of the template that the movie sticks to are similar to another Shane-starrer, RDX (2023), with cosmetic changes in the setting, the antagonists and the dynamics between the protagonists. Although Balti would make a louder blip on the scale of violence, the overall punch that the movie lands is less impactful. Sai Abhyankkar’s much-touted music score elevates some of the sequences, but it appears slightly repetitive after a point. The setting in the town bordering Kerala and Tamil Nadu goes well with the film’s bilingual character, with both languages seamlessly blending in the narrative.
While Shane, Shanthnu and the gang hog much of the screen time with some fluid action moves, Selvaraghavan and Alphonse Puthren also manage to make an impression as intimidating gangsters. Poornima Indrajith gets an unevenly written character of the money lender ‘Gee Maa’, whose role in the scheme of things in that border town is not always too clear. Preethi Asrani, the female lead, is mostly sidelined in the narrative.
Overall, Balti is a film in which an unending stream of well-staged action sequences barely keeps afloat a plot lacking any novelty.
Balti is currenty running in theatres
Published – September 26, 2025 05:23 pm IST
