Ugram is a simple mystery, although it tries to complicate things by introducing different characters (read: red-herrings) and interspersing multiple points, from a medical condition to an act of revenge. Shiva’s wife and daughter go missing after the aforementioned accident and the distressed cop and husband has to now rescue his family while also battling a condition related to his brain. The medical angle and its grievous effects on the character aren’t registered fully in this otherwise serious film. I understand that it exists to raise stakes and serve as a ticking time bomb but the overall plot remains unaffected sans this arc too; so does Shiva’s beef with his father-in-law, played by Sharath Lohithaswa, in the overall scheme of things.
That brings me to the film’s non-linear structure, which, at times, tends to dilute the tension the writing managed to build until then. The most jarring instances have to be the cutaways from the serious mood to light and cheerful songs. While they are intended to let the audience breathe for a while, they come across as speed breaks in an otherwise taut narrative. It’s high time filmmakers contemplate writing better romantic threads and extracting better performances to establish relationships between the lead characters. Agent, Ramabanam, and now Ugram, these recent films shoehorned love stories (in Ugram, the relationship, at least, holds some significance) and the resultant is tasteless and temper-testing. It’s ironic that the most ‘ugram’ we, as the audience, experience while watching the film is during the upbeat sequences.
Naresh is the strongest link in Ugram. Despite some teething troubles, he is wonderful as an angry, grieving, helpless cop. His biggest success comes through the fact that 30 minutes into the film, I forgot about his indestructible foundation in comedy that he has spent close to two decades building. Halfway through the film, I was convinced that Naresh could effortlessly play an action hero, and by the end, I was cheering for him as he slayed the bad guys in slow-mo, covered in blood, while musician Sricharan Pakala channeled all his energy to render a rousing background score. And the action scenes have a force that’s not found in most big-budget films too. A reinvented Naresh, who gets one of the coolest intro scenes we have seen in recent times, holds Ugram together during its weaker parts too. He never lets his comic image overshadow him here.