One Cut Two Cut (2022) is the story of Gopi (Danish Sait). Gopi is not your typical Indian film hero; he's earnest, awkward, out of shape, and has an advanced degree in Arts and Crafts; even his late mother found him more than a little ridiculous. But then,One Cut Two Cut isn't your typical Indian move.
Gopi has finally found a job teaching arts and crafts to elementary school students. The school is run down, most parents have just stopped sending their children, and the few kids who do show up are herded into a single classroom and mostly allowed to run wild. Gopi takes his place at the head of the class and politely asks for the students' attention. They ignore him, so he makes a paper crane. That gets one girl's attention and then another, and soon he has the whole classroom watching with fascination. It turns out that Gopi isn't just good at arts and crafts, he's also a genuinely good teacher. He's kind and patient and kind of ridiculous, and the students respond well to that.
Meanwhile, Pruthviraj (Prakash Belawadi) has retired after a long and successful career, and he's not happy about it. Years ago he beat a young Amitabh Bachchan for the radio station job,and he's convinced that if it had gone the other way than Amitabh would still be working at the radio station, while he would be the legendary legendary actor and star of Don, Coolie, Deewar, and Mard. (I have seen Mard. I think Amitabh would be willing to let that one go.)
Pruthviraj decides to hold a protest in order to get attention and maybe bring about social change, but only three people show up: aspiring stand up comedian Ayan (Vineth "Beep"Kumar), retired army chef Gurudev (Manoj Sputnique Sengupta), and militantly vegan blogger Neha (Roopa Rayappa). The four give up on the protest and go to lunch, and everyone starts talking about how they need something bigger. Not a protest, a revolution! When Gurudev mentions that he has a gun, Pruthviraj comes up with a spectacularly terrible plan to gain attention.
Back to Gopi, who has been having a great day so far - not only are the kids listening to him, but Nagaveni (Samyutka Hornad), one of the other teachers, is the literal girl who got away; their potential arranged marriage fell apart as soon as her father learned he had a degree in arts and crafts, and now she's here and Gopi has an actual job.
And then the day gets worse, as four strangers in red jumpsuits with Salvador Dali masks burst into the room and take everyone hostage. Nobody knows they're there, and there's no one to make their demands to, but fortunately the Hindi teacher (Aruna Balraj) has aphone number for the Chief Minster's secretary (Sampath Maitreya). Unfortunately, the secretary only speaks Kannada, while none of the would be terrorists do. Gopi is fluent in Kannada, though, and thinks he's fluent in English, so he acts as translator, and wackiness ensues.
Things don't go well. Pruthvirak and his gang can't get along for long enough to present a coherent manifesto, let alone a list of demands. The secretary has no intention of giving them anything, anyway. He's already ordered the state government's top Secret Agent (Vamsidhar Bhogaraju) to gather some men, go to the school, and kill everybody before word can get out and threaten the Chief Minister's reelection.
These people need a hero. What they've got is Gopi, and he sets out to save the children and the woman he barely knows but has a thing for with his particular set of skills: kindness, patience, and papercraft. He might get some help from plucky reporter Komala (Soundarya Nagaraj) if she can convince her boss that there really is a hostage situation so he stops sending her to cover hula hooping stories..
In some ways the movie reminds me of Mr. Bean or even Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp - they're comedies which take a bumbling and silly character and put them in stressful situations with characters who are not silly. Granted, those comedies don't normally involve schoolchildren being held hostage - at one point Gopi breaks the fourth wall to point out that the movie has gotten really dark, and the actors all pull out their scripts and confirm that yes, things have gotten very dark.
Things don't stay dark, though. In the end this is a comedy, and Gopi saves the day by being kind, rather than by transforming into an action hero. That doesn't mean that Gopi winds up successful or even respected at the end of the movie, and certainly doesn't herald an era of widespread appreciation for professional arts and crafts, but he saved people and proved something to himself in the process. One must imagine Gopi happy.
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