AMIGOS (2023) Movie Full Review

In an action movie about unrelated doppelgangers and mistaken identities, there are usually only two characters with this problem. "Amigos" has three characters who are unrelated doppelgangers, which only makes this messed up story dumber. And with a total running time of 137 minutes, "Amigos" is simply too long for a movie with a very thin and silly plot.

About AMIGOS (2023) Movie

"Amigos" is the feature debut of writer/director Rajendra Reddy, who has copied so many other Bollywood actioners by having the same soundtrack as the characters have simple-minded conversations and move from one ridiculous scenario to the next, with some musical numbers thrown into the mix. 

"Amigos" is just more of the same mind-numbing regression about accidents with doppelgangers, with the only novelty being that it's about three doppelgangers instead of the usual two. The movie could have done a lot of interesting things with that concept. Instead, it's just a pointless mess that drags on until the very predictable end.

In Amigos (which is set in various cities in India), an "ordinary guy" named Siddharth (played by Nandamuri Kalyan Ram), nicknamed Sidhu, works with his uncle (played by Brahmaji) in the family land development business based in Hyderabad, India. Siddhu learns about a popular website called GetDoppel.com where people can find biologically unrelated doppelgangers. 

The movie has a montage of footage that shows that it has become fashionable for people to post pictures and videos on social media of people meeting their doppelgangers from all over the world. Soon Sidhu finds himself involved in this fashion, for better or worse.

AMIGOS (2023) Official Trailer

The "better" part happens when he meets two men on GetDoppel.com who look exactly like him (except for their hairstyles and the way they dress), but all three men have very different personalities from each other. Manjunath Hegde (also played by Ram) is a nerd and a brilliant software engineer/computer programmer from the city of Bangalore. 

Michael (also played by Ram), who likes to wear sunglasses and habitually smokes cigarettes, is a mysterious "tough guy" from the city of Kolkata. The three men meet in person in Goa and quickly become friends.

The film takes an awful long time to show montage footage of Sidhu, Manjunath and Michael going on adventurous trips together. While Siddhu and Manjunath tell each other that they feel like brothers, Michael is not so open about his feelings. 

He remains a bit more emotionally guarded than the other two newfound friends. "Amigos" does an awfully good job of creating tension because it's obvious that Michael has secrets he's trying to hide.

"Amigos" spends a lot of time on a subplot about how the three doppelgangers use their physical similarities to help Siddhu woo a hard-to-please love interest named Ishika (played by Ashiqa Ranganath), who has a specific list of what she wants from her potential husband. Siddhu only meets a fraction of her requirements. So, Siddhu asks his new best friends to pretend to be him when he needs to impress Ishika in a certain way.

Ishika wants a highly intelligent man (where Manjunath is useful) and a man of great physical strength and courage, where Michael is useful. Sidhu's doubles pretend to be Sidhu when Ishika conducts various tests to check if "Sidhu" meets her requirements. It's really an idiotic scheme to fool Ishika this way, because Sidhu can only maintain the charade for a limited amount of time, since his doppelgangers can't always be around to pretend to be him.

The "worse" part of this meeting of the doppelgangers comes when Siddhu and Manjunath discover that Michael is actually a ruthless arms dealer named Bipin Roy, who is hiding from the National Investigation Agency (NIA). (This is not a spoiler because the true identity is revealed in the film's trailer). And it doesn't take a genius to figure out why he wants to meet Sidhu and Manjunath: this criminal wants to steal their identities.

"Amigos" puts these characters in chase scene after chase scene that don't really advance the story, they just make the plot more convoluted and ridiculous. The fight scenes are not believable at all. Some of the visuals are adequate, but the rest are downright awful because the actors are obviously playing in front of a screen and not in a real place.

Despite playing three different men in Amigos, Ram is mostly watchable as Sidhu. He portrays Manjunath in a bland and generic manner. His portrayal of Michael/Bipin is very startling as an exaggerated villain, including a very fake-sounding deep voice. The portrayal of Michael/Bippin is so horrible that viewers might laugh at this character rather than feel that this character is threatening.

All the other actors are mediocre or bad, though Brahmaji seems to be doing the best he can as Sidhu's uncle. Amigos has the expected betrayals and fight scenes that lead to a very unconvincing and unimaginative finale. 

If "Amigos" were a baseball game, the inept handling of the "three twin buddies" concept is not only a throwaway ball, but a complete failure on the "three strikes and you're out" principle.