Peddi Review: Ram Charan Carries a Script That Cannot Keep Up

Yes, Peddi is worth watching, and for one reason. Buchi Babu Sana's rural sports drama hands Ram Charan an 189-minute stage, and Charan fills it with a labourer who has nothing but his body and a village that does not exist on any map. The script around him is a cluttered pile of three sports, two rivalries and politics that will not land. Rotten Tomatoes, checked on October 22, 2026, has eight critic reviews and no score yet. The criticism splits down the middle. Audiences have been harder. Our rating is 6 out of 10.

Spoiler-free verdict: Watch it for the lead. An 189-minute Telugu sports drama with A.R. Rahman's score, carried by Ram Charan as Peddi, a daily wage labourer who fights for a railway station, a wage, and a name of his own. Rotten Tomatoes had 8 critic reviews and no score when we checked on October 22, 2026. You need no plot summary before pressing play.

What Peddi is about

Peddi works in a hamlet in the Vizianagaram region that has no name and no papers. He plays a sport for wages in local tournaments and has an unfair amount of talent doing it. His neighbour Appalasoori (Jagapati Babu) has spent three decades petitioning the government for the village to be recognised, named, and given a railway station, and has been humiliated at every door. Around them sit landlords who take what they like from people with no documents to complain with.

Achiyamma (Janhvi Kapoor) is the daughter of a local politician and the one person who treats Peddi as a man rather than a body. Shiva Rajkumar is Gournaidu, the veteran wrestler who tries to revive the village's dying sport by training Peddi for it. Boman Irani plays a Sports Ministry official in the present-day frame, sent out to find out where the country's athletic talent actually comes from after a bad Olympic year.

Cast and performances

Charan's body is the film's real argument. India Today's T Maruthi Acharya watched the physical work and wrote that "the transformation is not merely physical. Charan changes posture, body language, energy and attitude with impressive ease." The film around him is a different matter, and that is why this is six out of ten rather than eight.

Filmfare's Sashidhar Adivi put it plainly: "Ram Charan's performance is the film's unqualified high point. His portrayal of Peddi is weathered, deeply felt and completely authentic." Janhvi Kapoor gets a role the script never gives a floor of its own, and Shiva Rajkumar gets the film's most generous lines as the mentor who tells Peddi that a body is a tool and a name is a right.

What works

A.R. Rahman's score. It carries the emotion the script cannot articulate, and it does the film's other job, which is to make a village that does not exist feel like somewhere you would fight for. Naveen Nooli cuts it and R. Ratnavelu photographs it, and the two of them keep a three-sport structure legible when the writing starts to fray.

The sports themselves. The cricket sequence, where Peddi realises he is being cheated while facing twenty-one opponents, is the best action the film has, because the game is doing the character work rather than interrupting it.

What doesn't

The writing. The Hindu's Sangeethha Devi Dundoo wanted the film to "match its ambition with sharper writing" and found it "a messy, uneven drama held together by a committed lead performance and a stirring musical score." That is the whole review in one line, and it is the sentence the film keeps proving.

The excess. The Hollywood Reporter India's Sruthi Raman saw "an overstretched climax", then conceded that by the end "we don't really mind". Scroll's staff writer wanted the film's argument about marginalised Indians delivered "in a less messy and overwrought manner", and asked for one fewer sport. CNN-News18's Chirag Sehgal went further and gave the film one and a half stars out of five, calling it a film that "can be skipped". The Hindustan Times' Neeshita Nyayapati was kinder and found the fault line: the film falters on the scenes that pad it out.

What audiences say

All figures checked on October 22, 2026. Rotten Tomatoes has 8 critic reviews and no Tomatometer score yet, with a Popcornmeter of 74 percent from 250-plus verified ratings. Metacritic has no page for the film. Letterboxd's member average is a weighted 2.21 from 19,268 ratings, with 21,506 members having watched it and 2,536 liking it. TMDB has it at 5.7 from 73 votes. We do not quote IMDb here, because the site blocks our checks.

The Letterboxd figure is the one to sit with. A 2.21 from nearly 20,000 ratings is not a rounding error, and it lands on the same thing the reviews complain about: a film that spends three hours promising a sports drama and delivers a montage. Charan's audience showed up. The film did not repay them.

Where to watch Peddi

JustWatch, which checked 376 streaming services on October 22, 2026, lists Peddi on Netflix and Netflix Standard with Ads in the United States, with no free tier and no rental option. The same listing shows tickets on sale at AMC Theatres and Fandango, so the theatrical window is still open for anyone who wants to see the cricket sequence on a real screen. The runtime is 189 minutes.

Current availability, cast details and member reviews sit on our Peddi streaming options and member reviews page.

Verdict

Is Peddi worth watching? Yes, but only for the performance that carries it and the score that shapes it. Ram Charan turns a labourer with no paperwork into a man with a grievance you can feel in your shoulders, and A.R. Rahman's music keeps the village alive when the plot abandons it. Everything else, from the three sports to the politics, is a script trying to hold more than it can. Six out of 10 is what the criticism earns.

Spoiler warning: the ending of Peddi

Appalasoori loses his appeals, a child of the hamlet dies in the forest while the community is trekking back to work, and the man who spent thirty years asking for a railway station steps in front of a passing train. The villagers burn the tracks in grief. Peddi goes to Gournaidu and trains, and he wins his way through local and state wrestling until a rival breaks his leg and ends the sport for him.

He refuses the government desk job that is offered as compensation, leaves Achiyamma, and goes to Delhi to argue his case in person. The Railway Minister mocks him. So Peddi amputates the leg that his own ambition cost him, learns to run on a blade, and enters a national para-athletics race in 1996. He wins it, and he uses the victory speech to put his village's lack of recognition on national television. Achiyamma has already called herself his wife. Rambujji, who humiliated him, is watching the broadcast and is moved by what the man did to himself. Public pressure forces the government to recognise the hamlet and commission the station it asked for thirty years earlier.

When the government offers to name the new station after him, Peddi asks for it to be named Appalavalasa, after Appalasoori. He comes home to a celebration and makes his peace with his mother and with Achiyamma.

The film then steps out of the past. In the present day, the Sports Ministry official who came looking for Peddi decides to build a national programme that hunts for athletic talent in villages like this one.