Isakapatnam aspires to be a sprawling crime saga in which every murder has consequences, every betrayal shifts the balance of power, and every character carries old wounds. Directed by Garry BH from a script by Prashant Ragathi with dialogues by Tajuddin Syed, the Prime Video series stars Samuthirakani as feared gangster Naidu and Aishwarya Rajesh as his daughter Bharathi.
Sunil, Naresh Agastya, Merin Philip, Sudhakar Komakula, Rajeev Kanakala, Raja Chembolu and Banerjee round out an ensemble of characters including henchmen, townsfolk, cops and businessmen.
The Prime Video series is set in the fictional coastal town of Isakapatnam. The town owes its prosperity to its docks, shipping trade, trucking business and steel plant – a fertile setting for a story about the nexus between crime, commerce and politics. Oddly, though, the series barely uses any of it. The docks have little bearing on the story, which unfolds mostly in houses, police stations, hideouts, and an occasional boat scene.
Naidu’s backstory begins in 1985, when he arrives in Isakapatnam as various local factions battle for control. Burma immigrant Pothana wants to overthrow Chinnarao. Naidu, naturally, has bigger plans. Except that the series barely shows us how those plans unfold.
Naidu sits at the centre of everything that is wrong in this port town. Feared by some and loathed by others (including Bharathi), Naidu’s only real bond is with his right-hand man, Kottayya (Banerjee).
We are expected to accept that Naidu has become the town’s undisputed kingpin because everyone keeps saying so.
The timeline is muddled too. Bharathi is a young woman now, but people in Isakapatnam continue to drive old Fiat cars and use rotary phones. Time passes because the screenplay says it has, not because the world around the characters changes in any meaningful way.
There’s plenty happening. Isakapatnam just doesn’t have much to say about any of it. Instead, it piles on incident after incident, killing after killing, until revenge becomes everyone's default motivation and violence loses much of its dramatic weight. As the vendettas pile up, the plot grows increasingly confusing.
Naidu kills, threatens and terrorises almost by reflex. The problem is not that he is evil; it is that his evil is so relentlessly one-dimensional that it becomes boring. Eventually, you stop caring whether he survives because Isakapatnam has given you so little reason to invest in him beyond his capacity for violence. Samuthirakani spends much of the series glowering through scenes, unable to inject nuance into a character who has been written almost entirely as a one-note strongman.
Isakapatnam mistakes big dramatic gestures for meaningful storytelling. Characters make life-altering decisions with barely any emotional or narrative groundwork. People do things because the plot requires them to, not because their actions feel earned. The superficial script populates the series with linear, simplistic characters and criminals who operate in plain sight.
Take the scene in which Bharathi hands over her gold bangles to a complete stranger simply because he is introduced as being from an NGO. She asks no questions. Neither does the script. Elsewhere, characters aren’t so much written as labelled. “Lawyer” is a lawyer. “NGO” is an NGO. Professions become identities.
Similarly, characters like Bharathi, her boyfriend Suri, the auto-rickshaw driver with a do-gooder inclination, a frustrated cop are all placeholders in an attempted gangster game of thrones.
Accountability is another casualty. Murders, betrayals, explosions and shifting loyalties happen frequently, yet very little appears to have lasting consequences. Characters simply move on to the next attack or act of revenge, leaving the violence curiously weightless, and the police amusingly benign.
Aishwarya Rajesh’s Bharathi is the closest the series comes to creating an interesting character. She begins as spirited and rebellious, only to seemingly surrender her agency at a crucial juncture despite all the defiance that has come before. It is only around the fifth episode that Bharathi begins to acquire the moral ambiguity Isakapatnam desperately needs, hinting that perhaps the apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree.
That's also when the show finally finds its rhythm. By the fifth episode, the family dynamics become more compelling. The shifting loyalties begin to generate genuine intrigue. In a seven-episode series, however, that is simply too late.
There are flashes of style throughout, but barely any emotional impact. Isakapatnam has an an expansive canvas, a talented cast and the ingredients of an engrossing gangster drama. What it lacks is the nuance to make any of its characters, or their fates, matter. For all its bluster, Isakapatnam ends up with remarkably little to say.
