Hadinelentu is similarly respectful of each of its characters and even if it doesn’t dedicate a full-fledged scene or two to a handful of them, you still gather that there are well-defined personalities that exist there. Take the college sports coach, Abdul (played by Lakshmi Narayana). His impact on the film is remarkable but put together, he gets not more than 5 minutes in terms of screen time. Or the college vice-principal, Seetha (played by a superb Rekha Kudligi), who perhaps gets the biggest and best character arcs in the film. But at first, we do not see her being a valid component of this story. Every single actor in the cast — Bhavani Prakash, Lakshmi Murthy, Sudha Belawadi, Ravi Hebballi, Nagendra Shah, Sringeri Ramanna, Gunjalamma and even the group of college students — perfectly understands the pulse of this gripping drama/thriller.
Arjun Raja’s cinematography, which views the drama from such exciting vantage points, is another major highlight of Hadinelentu and so is Shivkumar Swamy’s editing. Prithvi Konanur, as the director, is in perfect sync with these two departments and even though his style isn’t exactly noticeable, it adds a layer of simplicity that a film of this kind requires. For him, less is clearly more.
As already pointed out, Konanur might be a filmmaker who sets out to “raise important questions” through his cinema, but he doesn’t condescend to us for taking up the task. Instead, he believes in making compelling stories out of everyday reality that almost all of us are intrinsically part of but aren’t courageous enough to accept the fact. Maybe that is why none of the characters in his film could be classified as conventionally negative or positive. Hadinelentu, by all means, is one such statement.