Amazon and showrunner Krish Jagarlamudi’s Arabia Kadali is worth our time even if one has seen Chandoo Mondeti’s Telugu hit Thandel released earlier this year, where Nag Chaitanya and Sai Pallavi gave moving performances as the fisherman who strays into Pakistani territory, and his ladylove who runs from pillar to post trying to get him released.
Satyadev and Anandhi play exactly the same characters, though in their own way, trapped in a situation engendered by poverty and fuelled by red-tapism.
In spite of the film being so recent, I was quite taken up with the eight-episode adventure series. Although Anandhi as Ganga cannot match Sai Pallavi’s intensity and restraint (very few contemporary actresses can), Satyadev (recently seen alongside Vijay Deverakonda in Kingdom) brings out the anguish, helplessness, anger, and bitterness of a man trapped between the turbulence of the ocean and the apathy of the bureaucracy.
The authentic locations and some gripping writing, topped by some explorative cinematography (Sameer Reddy) and spartan editing (Chanakya Reddy Toorupu), imbue the end product with enough vigour to keep us watching till the very end.
Understandably, the portions shot in coastal Andhra are far more authentic than the Pakistani interludes, which smack of cultural naivety: villainize the jail superintendent Saleem (Amit Tiwari), glorify the prison doctor Fatima (Poonam Bajwa), and so on and so forth, thereby trying to create a bumbling balance. Also, the Urdu language spoken by the Pakistanis seems strained.
Unnecessary complications and theatrical twists in the second half stymie the flow of the narration.
That said, Arabia Kadali makes for a riveting adventure story with ample plotting synergy to convey the hurt, anger, humiliation, and determination of a hero who reluctantly finds himself navigating the destiny of his fellow men in an alien, largely hostile land. Satyadev as Badri is every inch the unassuming hero: pleading, bleeding, and needing desperately to find a way out of the horrific crisis.
Some of the supporting cast could have been a tad less over-zealous. And the prison sequences needn’t have followed the Prison Break trope.
But the crisis hits us where it is meant to. Although we know the outcome, we can’t help rooting for these men at sea.
