Dulquer as Baskhar is an obedient family man who does everything in his capacity to keep his family happy including borrowing money from neighbours, repurposing gifts, or giving away his dinner to his son so that the latter keeps full. But life doesn’t comply with him and throws in a severe blow of rejection that devastates him completely; when Baskhar fights these odds, even through illegal means where he cheats and lies, you see yourself rooting for him, you want him to win big and this where Venky Atluri’s masterpiece wins too – in successfully getting the emotion from the audience reciprocated.
What lays the foundation to this reaction from the people would be a believable and relatable middle-class world that the director builds – a house with chipped walls, a father in a bank job on a scooter, a mother who aspires to make money out of her pickingling skills, an extended family that ill-treats you because you’re not of the same economic status or your children being forced to wear the same t-shirts for all occasions because you can’t afford new clothes each festival. Compared to most ‘middle class’ families portrayal in both Telugu and Tamil films, Atluri’s specimen is rather realistic in an otherwise fictional story.
Dulquer carries the film on his shoulder and he is quite convincing as Baskar, his little smirks of haught when he’s posed with threats or his warm, sweet eyes when he’s providing for his family or a determined tone of voice when he is being assertive, all add great character to the role he plays. The non-linear narrative works wonders in keeping the film interesting too, especially since the screenplay of the underdog winning big is predictable. It is, however, a little too much creative liberty on the writer’s side to let Baskhar slide through a loophole for every single problem that arises that makes it convenient. But again, he is a Baskhar who is ‘Lucky’, someone who pulls himself out of sticky situations rather than serving an intense drama.
Lucky Baskar also captures the retro vibe really well – at no point do you find it inconsistent but the biggest hero of the film is GV Prakash with his brilliant background scores that soar high as a scene elevates or mellows down to enhance melancholy.
Meenakshi Chaudhary is brilliant too, especially when you take her previous roles of minimal importance like that of Guntur Kaaram or GOAT into account. Whatever we know about Baskhar as a vulnerable and gullible man is through her. She’s a supportive wife and mother but she’s not one of those ‘submissive’ kinds – she questions her husband’s sudden flight to success, his haughty arrogance towards her but also defends him in front of her relatives who are the first to talk trash about her family. She also runs a home pickling business in which she’s massively successful but when Baskhar makes the smallest comment about how she wouldn’t have been fruitful if he didn’t invest the capital in the first place, she immediately shuts it down.
This is probably what makes Lucky Baskar stand out; it isn’t your usual rags-to-riches story, nor is it a usual thriller – it is complex in the emotions it builds, the story it narrates and the characters it introduces.
Rating – 3.5/5
