1888 Movie Review : An indie win!

Sandhya Shetty (Neethu Shetty), a leading Kannada actress, is on the verge of becoming a politician. She is actively involving herself in social welfare activities. Insurance agent, Vikas (Pratap Kumar), who is struggling to make his ends meet, is looking for one bit of luck that can change his life. When demonetisation is announced, Sandhya Shetty becomes desperate to exchange the notes she has stashed over the years. After all her options are exhausted, she decides to burn the money to get rid of it. But, a drunkard Prathap (Manju Raj), who overhears the plan, attacks them at the last minute and flees with money. Vikas accidentally joins him and the duo travel all around the city to exchange the old notes with new notes. The twist occurs when they find out that one of them is from the intelligence bureau.

While the first half takes off slowly, the second half makes it all worth the wait. As the investigation progresses, the plot becomes very interesting. A detailed explanation on Bitcoin, the dark web shows the amount of research that has been on the subject done for the script. The movie also has several popular faces such as Raghu Ramappa, Pradeep Doddaiah, and Adviti Shetty. It also sheds light on what happened among powerful people during noteban and how their struggles were very different from that of a common man.

1888 is an indie film shot completely in Guerrilla style. For the budget the movie is made in, the car chase sequences are extremely good. It was a pleasant welcome to watch talented actress Neethu Shetty on screen again. The other characters too become more watchable as the story progresses. Dialogues and the first half screenplay could have been better. But with a limited budget, the team has delivered an interesting indie investigative thriller.

Directed by Sourabh Shukla, 1888 makes for an interesting watch if you can patiently sit through the first half. The movie, which has won several awards globally, is currently streaming on Apple TV and VDOjar.