Tagaru

ACP Shiva alias Tagaru Shiva investigates a suicide case of a girl named Tejaswani. The suicide is linked to a notorious gangster Daali and his brother Cockroach, where he also investigates a teenager's death, which is orchested by Uncle's aide Baby Krishna. Shiva kills Baby at his hideout, where he arrests Cockroach (who came to celebrate Baby's birthday at the hideout) and tortures him, but releases him due to Daali and Uncle's influence.

Shiva meets Panchami through an alliance sent by his superior ACP Ramachandra, where they begin to spend time with each other and decide to get married. A cat and mouse game ensues between Daali and Shiva, where Shiva kills Cockroach in an encounter. Enraged, Daali and his best friend Chittaranjan "Chitte" attacks Panchami and Shiva during the morning jog. Shiva and Panchami are admitted to hospital, where Panchami dies from her injuries.

Seeking vengeance for Panchami's death, Shiva discreetly kills every associates connected to Daali and Chitte, including Chitte and Uncle. Shiva learns that Panchami's sister Punarvasu is arrested by the Goa Police in a raid, where he saves and takes her to Ramachandra's house. Daali learns about Shiva's involvement behind the murders, where he hires an hitman to finish him. The hitman finishes Ramachandra, where he soon gets killed by Shiva. Shiva heads to Daali's birthday bash and kills Daali, thus avenging Panchami's death.

• Shiva Rajkumar as ACP Shivakumar
• Dhananjay as Daali aka Nimbe
• Bhavana as Panchami, Shiva's fiancée
• Manvitha as Punarvasu, Panchami's younger sister
• Devaraj as ACP Ramachandra, Shiva's mentor
• Vasishta N. Simha as Chittaranjan "Chitte"
• Sudhi as Cockroach, Daali's brother
• Sachidananda Sachu as Don Uncle aka Narayanaswamy
• Devanatha as Baby Krishna
• Poornachandra Mysuru as Jaamoon Ravi
• Anitha Bhat as Daali's girlfriend
• Triveni Rao as Constable Saroja
• Rockline Sudhakar as Subbi aka Saahiti
• Dileep as Dileepa
• Satyanarayana as Constable Satyanna
• M. N. Lakshmi Devi as Shiva's grandmother

Tagaru
Soundtrack album by Charan Raj
Released	2018
Recorded	2017
Genre	Feature film soundtrack
Label	PRK Audio
Charan Raj chronology
Pushpaka Vimana (2017) Tagaru (2018) Dalapathi (2018)
External audio Official Audio Jukebox on YouTube

Charan Raj has been signed to compose the score and songs for the film.[20] The lyrics for the songs are written by V. Nagendra Prasad, Yogaraj Bhat and Jayanth Kaikini.

It was reported that for the first time ever, multiplexes across the state of Karnataka are seeing standees of an actor draped in garlands of flowers and money.[21] Outside Karnataka, the film released in Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Sangli, Dudhani, Miraj, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Goa and Kasargod. Tagaru was reported to have emerged as the biggest ever Kannada film in the opening weekend outside Karnataka by grossing ₹10 crore (US$1.3 million) in 3 days.[22] The movie was also reported to be the first Kannada movie to be released in both Kenya and Japan[23]

Critical Reception

Tagaru received positive reviews from critics and audience.

The New Indian Express rated the movie 4 out of 5 and said "Tagaru manages to fall into the classics category, with intense characters, brilliant screenplay, creative cinematography and promising music including the background score playing with the stunts scenes. This is a simple and familiar story, but it is told remarkably well with Suri’s new style that is non-linear".[24] Rating 3 out of 5, Bangalore Mirror praised it by saying"If the presentation is all that matters, Tagaru will remain entrenched at the top for a long time to come. When a dazzling screenplay is given a higher pedestal than an engaging plot what you get is Tagaru in all its resplendent glory." but cautioned "It is mayhem. The timeline is impossible to follow post-interval without disengaging yourself from the proceedings. The overweening complexity takes the fun out of the narration. The film tried to look like a Quentin Tarantino film, but ends up like a Ram Gopal Varma film."[25] Deccan Herald called it "A glorious celebration of machismo and underworld gangsta warfare, Tagaru splashes the screen with gut-wrenching gore and bloodshed. This idiom of cinematic narration, ensures novelty and niftyness, certain surefootedness providing Tagaru with the zip and style to be engrossed in it.", rating it 3 out of 5.[26] Deccan Chronicle, rating it 2.5 out of 5 warned "More confusions even as several characters keep getting introduced every now and then, making it hard, harder and hardest to stay on with it right till the end. Suri falters at delivering what is most essential in a tale of this nature - a gripping thriller".[27] The Hindu said "This happens to be one of Shivanna’s most mature performances. Suri pays homage to one of his favorite directors Ram Gopal Varma's Satya in the initial portions. There’s the internecine struggle for supremacy, cops and the khadi-clad using goons to eliminate opponents and for extortion. However, Suri's strong visual sense is just not matched by writing skills. It's as if scattered scenes have been picked up and pieced together on the editing table. A convoluted narrative does not make a film different". Indiaglitz commented that "Soori has applied the earlier Upendra tactics in his narration style and never misses the link. For that audience have to make a long jump in this flashback technique of narration. The terrific narration is very strong in contents although it confuses here and there. Shivarajakumar as an intelligent and cool-headed cop has given a profound performance."[28]

While compiling the 25 Greatest Kannada Films of the Decade , Karthik Keramalu of Film Companion had said "The entire film has uber-cool written all over it, albeit with guns and billhooks. Tagaru is the star -film of the decade (yes it's above K.G.F on the charts)".[29]

Soori had revealed that there would be a sequel to this movie even before the movie released while shooting the end credits of this film at the Bandi Makalamma temple. Producer Sreekanth also gave the go-ahead for the sequel, and the team even had the muhurath done with a simple puja.[35]

The copyrights of the Tamil remake version were sold to Tamil director M Muthaiah who has signed to remake the movie with Vikram Prabhu.[36][37][38] Tamil remake is titled as Raid.[39]

• Tagaru at IMDb