Republic review: Sai Dharam Tej anchors a strong political film about corrupt system

Deva Katta’s Republic (2021) will go down as one of the important Telugu films in recent years. It asks an important question: what is change when seen from a society’s standpoint? Is it having rigging-free elections or corruption-free government or eradicating caste pride?

It has been more than a decade since Deva Katta made a mark with his political film Prasthanam (2010) and he returns strongly with Republic, which shines the spotlight on the harsh reality of the system we live in.

The story is centred on Abhiram (Sai Dharam Tej), who grows up as an idealist and lives by certain values. An incident makes him give up on his US dreams and a seat at MIT to become a district collector. He dreams of a clean administration, a system that stands by its people and not just uses them as pawns during elections. But to realize his dream, Abhiram must lock horns with Visakha Rai (Ramya Krishnan), a ruthless local politician. As Abhiram takes up the responsibility of cleaning up the system, he faces one blow after another in terms of reality. The rest of the film is about his dream to bring about a change in the system.

For a mainstream political film, Republic doesn’t take the escapist entertainment route to appeal to the masses. Sure, it has some scenes that play to the gallery, but it’s largely a film that doesn’t deviate from asking why it is difficult to have a corruption-free system and who is responsible for bringing about the change. It is not a film where the hero gets to flex his muscles and beat the bad guys to pulp. It’s one where the hero talks about democracy, 'urban Naxals' and voting rights, among other things.

The film has some interesting characters, especially Jagapathi Babu's corrupt civil servant. Ramya Krishnan as the power-hungry politician isn’t your quintessential bad character and one can sense that a lot of effort has gone into writing it.

The film does take a few cinematic liberties here and there, but that doesn’t make it any less impactful. What really makes Republic hard-hitting is the ending; it could leave one with mixed feelings. The way the filmmaker has chosen to end it is a stark reminder of the harsh reality and how it’s extremely difficult to change the system even if a few bad apples are removed.

Sai Dharam Tej is aptly cast and gets ample scope and screen time to shine and deliver a strong performance.