Ikka

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a star’s person eventually subsumes every character that they play on screen. With Sunny Deol, it’s never about whether he is good or bad in a film. It’s about Sunny Deol playing Sunny Deol in a Sunny Deol film! The necessary accoutrements are all in place. The slow-motion entry, the clenche d f ist , the admonishing finger, the fiery stare, the high-octane roar and of course, the “dhai kilo ka haath”. Together, they provide the intended comfort of familiarity. As for Akshaye Khanna, the Dhurandhar hangover continues to loom large. The hair is still there, though not quite as glorious as before, but recognisably similar. The tilted neck, the inverted smile and the studied mannerisms are even more pronounced. Bookended by these two larger-than-life performances is a story struggling to breathe and say something of its own. A young girl is brutally assaulted under mysterious circumstances. As she battles for her life in the hospital, the action shifts to the courtroom. Enter Arjun Mehra (Deol), a lawyer whose reputation precedes him.

A lot is at stake in Ikka, and we are aren’t just talking about the receding hairlines of its main men. Almost three decades after they came together on screen for Border, Sunny Deol and Akshaye Khanna feature in this commercial Bollywood-style courtroom thriller that cranks up melodrama to the max, but is nostalgically old-school enough to make for some guilty-pleasure viewing. Unlike Border, where they batted for the same team, Sunny and Akshaye are at loggerheads in this Siddharth P. Malhotra-directorial, though they do join forces — unwillingly for the former — for a large part of this film that throws in enough twisty plot points but isn’t particularly smart or sleek.

kka revolves around the celebrated Public Prosecutor Arjun Mehra (Sunny Deol). He is known for fighting for the truth and that too by adhering to ethics. He stays in Mumbai with his wife Avantika (Dia Mirza) and daughter Samaira (Daria Bedi). One day, Shouryamann Gaur (Akshaye Khanna), son of a wealthy industrialist and politician Harshvardhan Gaur (Shishir Sharma), gets accused of attempting to murder Soma Mittal (Akansha Ranjan), a young girl he met at a night club. Arjun is offered to fight Shouryamann’s case as a Defense Lawyer this time. He plainly refuses because of the past equation between both of them. However, circumstances force Arjun to fight Shouryaman’s case.

The press screening of Ikka was held at Mumbai’s Sunny Super Sound—an appropriate venue, I thought, given the super sounds Sunny Deol makes in the movie. Since Damini (1993), the actor has used the courtroom drama as his personal soapbox. He rages and he raves, he rebukes and he reprimands. A part of me wishes Deol were an actual lawyer working in real courthouses. Imagine the swiftness in proceedings once his gavel-like fists land on the furniture—like a thunderclap. To be fair, director Siddharth P Malhotra uses this trick judiciously, initially giving us a calm, urbane Deol in natty linenwear. The actor plays Arjun Mehra, a celebrity defence attorney who never loses, always has a decisive ace up his sleeve (hence the film’s title), and, despite his large apartment and luxe lifestyle, exclusively represents the innocent and the powerless. And here comes his latest innocent: Shaurya (Akshaye Khanna), the reprobate son of an industrialist, accused of sexually assaulting and attempting to murder a date.

बॉक्स ऑफिस पर ‘गदर’ मचाने वाले सनी देओल और ल्यारी के ‘धुरंधर’ अक्षय खन्ना, साल 1997 की ब्लॉकबस्टर ‘बॉर्डर’ के करीब 30 साल बाद दोबारा साथ लौटे हैं। जाहिर है ऐसे में ‘इक्‍का’ से उम्मीदें भी उतनी ही बड़ी थीं। निर्देशक सिद्धार्थ पी मल्होत्रा ने जब से अपनी कोर्टरूम ड्रामा फिल्‍म की घोषणा की, इसे लेकर लोगों में जबरदस्‍त उत्साह दिखा। लेकिन अफसोस कि दोनों की स्टार पावर और दमदार परफॉर्मेंस के बावजूद यह फिल्म वो जादू नहीं जगा पाती, जिसकी आस थी। फिल्‍म शुक्रवार 10 जुलाई 2026 को सिनेमाघरों की बजाय सीधे OTT प्‍लेटफॉर्म Netflix पर रिलीज हुई है।

Packaged as a modern, gritty OTT thriller, Ikka leans heavily on the core DNA of commercial Hindi cinema, a formula that has increasingly been reduced to mere nostalgia. Fuelled by the star-versus-star dynamic, its narrative weight rests on the explosive chemistry between Sunny Deol and Akshaye Khanna. Physical dominance and moral integrity meet cold stillness and sharp smirks as Netflix, perhaps, wants to test and capture the appetite of a massive, single-screen mass audience. As a result, the recent box office success of Sunny and Akshaye seems to have prompted the makers to dress up a decade-old story to add a new section to the OTT library. At its heart is Arjun Mehra (Sunny Deol), a towering, righteous defence lawyer who is forced into a moral trap when circumstances force him to defend a murder suspect, Shauryamann (Akshaye Khanna). Known to fight for what is right, Arjun’s gut feeling and past experience tell him that Shauryamann is in the wrong, but to save what is precious to him and his wife, Avantika (Dia Mirza), he needs to compromise on his values.

What does an honest, idealistic lawyer, successful enough to own a sea-facing flat in Mumbai, do when faced with the prospect of defending a man charged with the grievous assault of a young woman? The face off between won’t-defend-the-indefensible Arjun Mehra (Sunny Deol) and entitled rich jerk Shauryaman Gaur (Akshaye Khanna) is your standard battle between the good guy vs the bad guy. Left to himself, Arjun wouldn’t touch Shaurya with a bargepole, but here, the writers try and finesse it, by forcing the former into the latter’s corner, by coming up with a you-can’t-be-serious crutch. But we are asked to roll with it, because it is that kind of film; truth being stranger than fiction, and all that.