Garuda Gamana Vrishabha Vahana 2021

Hari Rishab Shetty and Shiva Raj B Shetty dominate the streets of Mangaladevi, a coastal, culturally vibrant pocket of modern-day Mangalore. The town bears scars of gang power, where the police struggle to keep pace and violence fizzes just beneath the surface. Into this tense landscape arrives Brahmaiah Gopalkrishna Deshpande, a well-behaved, mild-mannered cop who is transferred to the area with the hope of restoring order. The tale immediately establishes a tension: Hari was born and raised in Mangaladevi, while Shiva’s origins remain shrouded, a mystery that will slowly pull the threads of loyalty, fear, and friendship into sharp focus.

The story unfolds with a haunting backstory for Shiva. He is discovered as a 12-year-old in a bag found in a well near Hari’s home, his neck scarred and his body marked by the marks of hardship. After being hospitalized and treated, Shiva survives and begins life on the streets, begging in the shadows of the town until Hari’s mother takes him in. What follows is a bond that feels fated: Hari and Shiva grow up not just as friends but as brothers for life. As children and then young men, they exchange quiet conversations and forceful silences, with Shiva emotionally tempered yet capable of explosive violence if those he cares about are threatened. The town learns that Hari can count on Shiva’s fierce protection, a shield that makes Hari untouchable in the eyes of rivals and even the police.

As they mature, Hari trades a measure of his raw street power for refined strategy, becoming a suave power player who commands gangs and muscles the city’s operations to his will. The police presence appears to bend to his influence, and his control extends to the corridors of authority as he aligns with Raviraj, a senior gangster and businessman who promises further ascent. Shiva, by contrast, remains blunt and laconic—a man of few words whose fierce loyalty makes him a formidable guardian for Hari and the people Hari considers his own. This uneasy balance—Hari’s calculated entrepreneurship and Shiva’s feral protective instinct—creates a dynamic tension: Shiva’s protective fury is a strength that helps Hari rise, yet it can also spark uncontrollable violence that threatens to pull Hari down with him.

Dissatisfaction gnaws at Shiva as Hari’s ambitions widen. The two brothers-in-arms drift as Hari leans into Raviraj’s orbit for growth, and Shiva senses that his role is slipping from partner to liability. The rift deepens when a seemingly small dispute between Raviraj’s brother-in-law and Hari escalates into a larger threat, prompting Hari to retreat and paving the way for Raviraj’s gang to set a plan in motion to neutralize Shiva. Brahmaiah, already weary of the town’s chaos, finds his resolve tested as Hari and Shiva’s conflict bleeds into the political arena. An MLA pressures the situation, hoping to see Hari and Shiva destroyed, and the power struggle escalates to dangerous levels. A police driver—acting as a double agent—becomes entangled in this web, playing both sides against each other in an intricate game designed to destabilize the pair.

When Brahmaiah uncovers Raviraj’s plan to eliminate Shiva, he passes the information to Shiva’s circle, trying to prevent a murder that could ignite a city-wide bloodbath. Hari, learning of the warning, counter-moves with his own forces, and a tense standoff follows: Shiva is saved at the last moment by his friends, but the revelation that Hari was behind attempts on Shiva’s life gnaws at him. In the heat of this distrust, violence erupts on both sides. Shiva retaliates for the killing of a gang member by striking back at Raviraj’s circle, and Hari responds by allying with Raviraj to extinguish Shiva once and for all.

The climactic turn comes when Hari hires a hitman to shoot Shiva as he plays cricket with friends, a stark reminder of how ordinary moments can become deadly in a city ruled by fear. The strike is swift and cold, a calculated blow that devastates Shiva’s inner circle as they witness the murder. Yet in a cruel twist of fate, Hari’s victory lap around the town is cut short when the very teenage boys who once played cricket with Shiva step into the scene. They pursue Hari and end his ascent with a knife, bringing down the once-feared gangster in a moment that strips away any illusion of invincibility. The epilogue closes the arc with a poignant image: the childhood forms of Hari and Shiva bury their adult selves, leaving a haunting sense that the forces of loyalty and vengeance have rewritten their fates in the pages of Mangaladevi’s history.

In this saga of power, friendship, and revenge, the city itself seems to pulse with every decision the two men make. The film traces how a shared past can forge a bond strong enough to shape a town, yet fractured enough to destroy it—unless mercy and restraint break through the cycle of retribution. The narrative moves deliberately, never shying away from the hard questions about loyalty, the cost of ambition, and the price of getting what you wish for when the streets demand loyalty to the very end.