Maa Inti Bangaaram review: Samantha shines in a Baasha template that lacks punches

The trope of the retired badass, or, to put it locally, the Baasha template, never grows dated because it is one of the most relatable tropes in cinema. Wait, hear me out. You could be anyone: a teacher, an autowala, a clerk, or a naive watchman; suddenly these films enable you to imagine a badass past life for yourself. After all, everyone is the protagonist of their own story in their head. That's the allure. A sleeping giant finally rises from slumber to save the day, bringing a sort of catharsis for the viewer, who can imagine their own version of a bloody past.

This is the current hit trend of South Indian cinema. While the template has been around for decades, the success of Kamal Haasan's Vikram in 2022 woke it up, much like the protagonists of such films do. The difference with Maa Inti Bangaram is that the badass with a past is not a hero but a heroine — and she is cast in perhaps the most unassuming role imaginable: a housewife, on a mission to make her estranged in-laws accept her and welcome her husband back.

The setup that works

It would be wrong to accuse Maa Inti Bangaaram of being predictable, because it doesn't pretend to keep things a secret. The film runs on dramatic irony — letting the viewer in on the secret while the naive characters remain oblivious — and it wins in the setup. Samantha plays Swarna, who arrives at her husband Anirudh's (Diganth Manchale) village for his sister's wedding, hoping to reconcile with his family, who shunned him for marrying her, a casteless orphan. Her mission: be the perfect daughter-in-law. The problem: she lacks the skillset entirely — the cooking, the cleaning, the prayers, the rituals. And above all, cooking. Then there is Karuna (Gulshan Devaiah), Swarna's nemesis from the past, the man who gave her her real name: Jhansi. By this point, the rest of the story writes itself.

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The film doesn't bore you despite its predictability. Director BV Nandini Reddy lets scenes breathe. The family drama has real meat, particularly the supposed cutesy rivalry between Swarna and Anasuya (Sreemukhi), the family's model daughter-in-law, a woman who is everything Swarna is not. There is also a lived-in chemistry between Swarna and Anirudh. He knows she is scamming his family with borrowed culinary skills. He knows her more than anyone else — but not entirely. The same layered unknowing exists between Swarna and her orphanage friend Kiranmayi (Manjusha Mukkavilli), who knows much about her friend, except why she is dragging a dead body in the backyard. Where films of this template treat such portions as perfunctory scene-setting, Ma Inti Bangaaram builds its entire first half on them for the eventual transformation of Swarna to Jhansi.

The pay-off that doesn’t

And that's precisely where the film lets you down. A story so carefully engineered for transformation — when it finally arrives, it doesn't land with the impact it deserves, despite Santhosh Narayanan's brilliant background score doing its best to carry the weight. The action of the crescendo moment becomes just another fight sequence. The stunts lack creativity; a particularly silly segment inside a bus is where the writing fully takes the back seat, letting the mundaneness take the wheel. The bigger misfire, however, is Karuna. He is written to be many things: a corrupt Naxal-like leader, a manipulator who plays mind games, an unpredictable mastermind. He does none of these things. Gulshan Devaiah tries to inject some quirkiness into the character, but the shallowness shows through at every turn. In a genre where the villain's menace is what earns the hero's legend, Karuna is a fatal weakness. He is all hat and no cattle.

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The wildling and the home

Underneath it all, Ma Inti Bangaaram has something interesting to say about what a family is supposed to be. Nandini depicts a structure that—despite its regressive casteism and sexism —becomes more accepting of anyone who truly wants to belong. For it, family becomes everything. In that sense, this is the story of a wildling trying to find a home built on love.

Karuna, at one point, sneers at Swarna's choice to settle for being a housewife. It would be easy to be swayed by his argument. It would also be tempting to read Nandini's vision of family as regressive — but what is more progressive than accepting a woman's choice, even if that choice is to be a housewife?