"Businessman" Movie Review

“Businessman” has opened to unprecedented fanfare and release with some 1600 prints and 134 theatres in Hyderabad alone. Being a Mahesh Babu-Puri Jagannath combination, its naturally on the cusp of heightened expectations. To a very large extent, the movie delivers with extra-ordinary entertainment in the first half and almost into the second half just on the basis of terrific screenplay, dialogues and maverick story-telling ability of Puri Jagannath with the magical screen presence of Mahesh Babu shows his natural knack of being an angry young man under tight leash and delivers a stylish performance with uninhibited looks, surprising close chemistry with Kajal (heroine) and dances that show him in better light than in recent times.


Most of the improved trappings of “Dookudu” in terms of better eye-contact, body language and finesse are what makes this movie mostly watchable except some portions of the second half which drag and sometimes bore. Fans will be delighted to hear so many mouthful and height-of-manhood dialogues in one movie – if there’s a soundtrack of dialogues – I probably will buy one – Puri’s pen shows sharpness and wit – this movie will probably have more one-liners than all his previous movies and don’t get misled by the cheesy advertorials of the hero vowing to make Mumbai piss in its pants – there are much more. Kajal is perhaps shown in more skimpy clothing and this is her boldest look after “Dhada” (Nag Chaitanya). Atleast two songs are well-choreographed and well worth – “Saarosthara” and “Chaavve”.

Even though the first half is under-fed on graphic violence, Puri compensates well in second half – the violence of “Pokiri” fame and even a liplock with Kajal. What mars the movie is this violence in the second half and the flimsy grounds on which the hero justifies it saying that since we kill so many mammals and amphibians daily - even this is justifiable - is ridiculous. Mahesh has shown so much restraint and responsibility in filtering out violence in “Dookudu” embraces it with both hands and plenty of guns in this movie – this can put anybody out of mind. The other bane in the movie is lack of a single-card Villain of the piece. Who is it? Not Prakash Raj. Not Nazar. Not Shinde. Not Subbaraju.

Nobody successfully contests Mahesh as a villain for too long – and nobody gets the lines or attention that’s worth their salt. And comedy – none of it in the second half. Most of the comedy, if you notice it, is in the first half and comes as fleeting in bits during the way the romance gets built up between the hero and his muse. Story-wise, there are many shades that resemble most of Puri’s films even though he gives a new extra-constitutional, legalistic license to create arson and loot by the hero who acts like a Robinhood- a law unto himself – in a bid to correct corrupt politicians and ill-bred criminal elements in the system. No Brahmanandam, No Ali (surprise) and No Jeeva – no comedy track at all but still the movie sustains very well until the 9th reel *(out of the 14 reels). With so much analysis for and against the movie, is the movie good to watch? It is mostly watchable– because of the narrative speed and story-telling of Puri Jagannath and Mahesh’s magical presence. Music by Thaman is good in BGM and atleast three songs. Some experiments in the movie are breaking a pattern – like no song till 30 minutes of the movie, no formal comedian, no villain of identifiable length – will have to see whether the fans lap it.