Ikka Review Sunny Deol Shouts Akshaye Khanna Repeats Dhurandhar In A Flat Courtroom Drama

Akshaye Khanna and Sunny Deol. Together. In a courtroom drama. On paper alone, that's an irresistible combination. But as the saying goes, if something seems too good to be true, it usually is. Ikka turns out to be a damp squib. Fikka (bland in English) would have been a more fitting title. The story, written by Althea Kaushal, revolves around Soma Mittal (Akansha Ranjan Kapoor), who is partying with Shauryaman Gaur (Akshaye Khanna) one night and, in the very next scene, is dumped on the roadside from a car, half dead. There's an eyewitness, Shauryaman is arrested. Being the son of a powerful politician, Shauryaman specifically asks for Arjun Mehra, aka Ikka (Sunny Deol), to defend him. Arjun refuses, insisting that only a miracle could make him take up the case. The very same day, his daughter is diagnosed with advanced-stage cancer and the only compatible bone marrow donor turns out to be Shauryaman himself. And thus begins Ikka. As you have probably gathered from the premise itself, Ikka isn't quite the clever courtroom thriller it promises to be. Instead, it leans heavily on convenient twists that stretch credibility far too often. Directed by Siddharth P. Malhotra, the film is so fascinated with its two leading men that, at times, the courtroom battle itself feels less important than the personal stories of Shauryaman and Arjun. The problem is, even those stories remain half-baked. Ikka is more interested in creating moments where its stars can play to their strengths: Akshaye Khanna gets to furrow his brows with trademark intensity, while Sunny Deol gets to slam tables and raise his voice. There's no way to know whether this was the makers' decision or Akshaye Khanna's own choice, but the Dhurandhar hangover is impossible to miss. The bad wig aside, the film goes all in on building his aura. It reaches a point where a man being produced in court for a murder case makes a slow-motion entry to a thumping background score, as though he's a superhero making a grand entrance. In what world is that supposed to make sense? The film