Godse

Godse is a 2022 Telugu vigilante action thriller written and directed by Gopiganesh Pattabhi and produced by C. Kalyan under CK Screens. Satyadev plays the title role, with Aishwarya Lekshmi in her Telugu debut as a police hostage negotiator. Wikipedia describes it as a remake of the 2018 Korean film The Negotiation, also drawing on the Spanish series Money Heist. Sandy Addanki composed the music, and the film was released on 17 June 2022.

What the story is about

Vaishali, a police hostage negotiator, is haunted by a case she failed: a robbery in which a pregnant woman was killed. Sixty-three days later she is called in to negotiate with a mysterious man who calls himself “Nathuram Godse”. He has kidnapped several high-profile businessmen and a police superintendent and is holding them at a hideout on an island, while the police surround it.

Godse will talk only to Vaishali, and his demands are not for money: he wants powerful people brought before him, starting with the state’s industries minister, and made to answer questions about corruption, sham companies and the jobless young people they have cheated. As the stand-off goes on, Vaishali sets out to learn who Godse really is and what has driven him to this.

Cast and crew

• Satyadev as Viswanath Ramachandra, alias “Nathuram Godse”
• Aishwarya Lekshmi as Vaishali
• Brahmaji as a special officer
• Tanikella Bharani as a retired judge
• Nagendra Babu as the Governor
• Prudhvi Raj as Industries Minister Phani Kumar
• Priyadarshi as a hacker
• Chaitanya Krishna as Rajaram
• Ravi Prakash as SP Sameer

Writer and director: Gopiganesh Pattabhi. Producer: C. Kalyan (CK Screens). Music: Sandy Addanki.

Release and reviews

Principal photography began on 11 February 2021, and the film opened on 17 June 2022 to mixed reviews. Paul Nicodemus of the Times of India gave it 3 out of 5 and wrote that Satyadev “once again hit it out of the park” in getting under his character’s skin. 123Telugu gave 2.5, calling it “a half-baked hostage drama” with a decent first half and a dull second, held up by Satyadev’s “sincere and intense performance”. Y. Sunita Chowdhary of The Hindu felt its story of a police-politician nexus “fails to engage”, and Asianet Telugu, at 2 out of 5, found it lacking freshness. We have not found box-office figures from a named outlet.

Where to watch Godse

Netflix holds the streaming rights, and the film was scheduled to stream there from 17 July 2022, according to Wikipedia. We have not checked a current Netflix listing, so availability may differ.

Sources: the Wikipedia article on Godse and the reviews it cites, linked above; our own cast and crew records.