Love is *not* a battlefield.

At first glance, Gatta Kusthi (2022) looks like a movie about the battle of the sexes, and there are a lot of ways that that can go wrong, especially since it also doubles as a sports movie.  Fortunately, writer-director Chella Ayyavu does a lot of things right, starting with the decision to let the wrestling be a metaphor for wrestling, and let the rest of the movie handle themes and nuances.

Veera (Vishnu Vishal) is handsome, athletic, charming, and owns his own farm, but he's still single.  The problem is that he was raised by his cartoonishly sexist uncle Ratnam (Karunas), and so he has a long list of expectations.  A proper wife should be less educated than he is, have very long hair, be silent and obedient, and be willing to devote herself entirely to him rather than thinking of a career.   Every time the family goes to visit a potential bride, Veera rejects her for one reason or another, usually the hair thing.  Just when it looks like there's no woman in Tamil Nadu who could possibly meet Veera's standards, Ratman's old friend Ganessh (Munishkanth) appears with a solution; he has a niece in Kerala named Keerthi (Aishwarya Lekshmi) who would be perfect.  The young couple meet, she has hair of sufficient length, and the match is fixed! The young couple marry and soon settle into a happy life, despite Veera trying to follow Ratnam's advice about keeping his wife in line.

However, Keerthi has a secret: it's not really her hair.  She's also a college wrestling champion in Kerala, with the skill and drive to be successful on a national level.  After a video of Keerthi defending her sister (Nikhila Sankar) from Eve teasers goes viral, Keerthi's marriage prospects are ruined.  She doesn't really care, but her father (Gajaraj) suffers a heart attack, so to protect his health she agrees to meet Veera and play demure, and because Veera refused dowry, she agrees to marry him.

Veera and Ratnam are prominent voices on the village council, which has been involved in a legal dispute with factory owner Dass (Ajay).  Dass gets Ratnam arrested on false charges, then goes to Veera's house when he's not home in order to threaten Keerthi.  Veera doesn't back down and wins the case.

At a temple function, Dass tries to take his revenge, sending his goons to kill Veera.  The young man fights bravely, and he does a pretty good job, but he's eventually blindsided and then overwhelmed. Dass is about to finish the job when Keerthi appears and takes the goons apart with surgical precision, sending most of them to the hospital.  On the one hand Veera is safe.  On the other hand, he was saved in public by his wife, which means he has to face some gentle (and some not-so-gentle) mockery.  Keerthi, on the other hand, is treated as a hero and local celebrity.

Despite this, the young couple still have a chance to work things out, at least until Ratnam gets out of jail.  Once he learns what happens, he goes to the house when Veera isn't home to berate Keerthi and her uncle, spewing such a stream of sexist crap that she loses her temper and slaps him.  And that's when Veera arrives.  Because this is the Village of People Who Jump to Conclusions, he throws Keerthi out of the house.

Once she's gone, Veera begins an epic mope.  He's so upset that Ratnam thinks he's helping when he sends Keerthi divorce papers without telling Veera.  Keerthi is also upset, so her family insists that she start wrestling again, which is probably a more healthy coping mechanism than anything Veera is doing.  She starts training under creepy and secretly evil coach Lokesh (Shatru.)  

When Veera and Ratnam find out that Keerthi will be competing in a big tournament, they decide that the only way Veera can reclaim his manhood is to compete in the same (women's) tournament and literally beat her at her own game.  The tournament officials try to turn them away, for obvious reasons, but Lokesh intervenes.  He loves the idea of using a husband-wife match for publicity, so he sets up the match and does everything he can to keep the couple from reconciling.

The stage is set for an old fashioned battle of the sexes, and that's how the people around Keerthi and Veera treat the situation, giving the young couple advice on how to deal with stubborn women/men. Veera's wrestling coach Kodangi (Hareesh Peradi), on the other hand, tells Veera that that's stupid, that conflict is bound to happen if you enter a relationship with a list of expectations rather than just letting the other person be who they are.  And while it doesn't sink in with Veera right away, the movie listens to Kodangi's advice, and points out that the conflict is stupid.  Veera and Keerthi face each other in the ring, but that's not how they settle their differences.  They talk.

Gatta Kusthi has a tricky premise.  There are a lot of ways the movie could have gone wrong, and it wouldn't work at all without engaging leads.  Aishwarya Lekshmi conveys a lot, even when she has to be demure, and the sense of relief when her secret is out and she gets to be her true self again is palpable.  Vishnu Vishal has arguably the harder job, since he has to be likable while still being a sexist jerk.  Veera comes across as also damaged by the toxic ideas about gender that he's absorbed, and once he manages to put them aside, he's immediately happier.  

Of course, any movie that includes a song about the late Mac Mohan, Bollywood's finest movie henchman, is going to get bonus points from me.