"Kabali" (Telugu/Tamil Film Review): A Hyperbole of Radioactive Waste

"Kabali" is a film Rajnikanth agreed to in order  to satisfy his creative impulses, not to pander to the fan's clamor for entertainment. That's what you realise once the titles pass and a bearded prisoner walks out of his cell as he gets released after serving a 25 year sentence. The story is all about Kabaleeswaran,  a rival gangster who was anointed by Sitarama Raju (Nazar) when he was a nobody in Malaysia. The rival gang led by Tony Lee (Winston Chao) and Vijay Singh (Kishore) is the scourge of Kuala Lumpur known by a prime number 43. Much of the story is about the inter-necine rivalry between Gang 43 and Kabali as they clash with each other eliminating most seniors and juniors. The story must be the thinnest one ever endorsed by  Superstar Rajni and does nothing much to cheer the family audiences who make it an annual jamboree to watch his films or diehard fans who whistle at his antics and swagger and style.

In 150 minutes, director PA Ranjith gives a clichéd presentation of gang-wars in Malaysia while giving a sketchy overview of life of Tamils in Malaysia. Both the themes inter-mixed in the story fail to enthuse the audience. In the name of stylish and slick overlay, Ranjith gives us a docu-drama with some of the most exquisite cruelties and slaying of innocents and not-so-innocents. How the Malaysian police gets hoodwinked most of the times, we don't know. And most of the shooting sequences where people fall like nine pins are shot in popular streets and temple corners of Malaysia which look ludicrous to folks who find the country  to be law-abiding and orderly. The story has no twists, no nuances and no theatrical thrills except soundbytes from sophisticated weaponry. Instead we get to see a motley of unfamiliar faces posing as gangster crew who can only be trigger-happy and move their arms and legs acrobatically.

There is no room for pure emotions or surcharged dialogues or entertainment in songs, it is all about serious, mean business of the rival gangs and the worlds they live in. There were opportunities for the director when an ensemble of victims rehabilitated by Kabali under "Free Life Foundation" celebrate their annual day with their chief sponsor but the director fritters it away in boring banter. There were opportunities in flashback too when Radhika Apte lights up the screen more than once but the magic never gets ignited because there is no interplay of romance between the two except as montage shots. Another great opportunity lost was the way veteran actor Nazar was restricted to few minutes but the emotions of passing on the baton from him to Rajni were never dramatic or inspired.

It appears this is more a film made for Rajni's desire to see him as a new age Don in tweedy suits and exuberant stills without the bothers of a regular fare of formula entertainment. To a large extent, Rajni is smashing and stunning in his looks and dressing. Even without makeup, his persona and screen presence is towering. The only person who matches him in screen presence is Dhaniska, who plays the suave and unsmiling assassin girl. Radhika Apte is unremarkable and looked like she was going to drop dead any moment on screen. Despite Ranjith's efforts to make her look good with plastic smiles, Radhika Apt should realize that it is Tollywood alone which showed her in better glamour and aura  despite her vitriolic attacks on Tollywood. Cinematography is a saving grace of the film and the fact that additional cinematography team is roped in embellishes the shots to give the tautness of a Hollywood classic in visual splendor. Malaysian skyscape never looked better and the aerial shots just make you long for more as the only visual relief in the film besides showing one-upmanship of rival gangsters. The climax sequence on top of a skyscraper is the only thing that haunts you visually once you wake up tired to the synthetic charms of an over-used plot.

Music by Santosh Narayan fails to register except in occasional BGM scores. There is originality in the way he uses death-knell-sounding sirens as BGM whenever Rajni scores a goal against rivals but beyond that the songs and the scores hardly impress. Because the film doesn't fit to the regular Rajni formula film, you can afford to take few breaks when a song appears in the film. In fact you can  afford to miss the many violent scenes which surprisingly  missed the attention of the censors. There is a sequence of Dinesh (part of Rajni's gang) getting pulverized with soda bottle after soda bottle and then gets his shoulder sawed out with a giant hack by the main villain Winston Chao. Scenes like this make you wonder why legends like Rajni chose such massive doses of violence in his films. This is not recommended for kids at all and adults also will eventually feel impatient and walk out of the film because of insipid content and iterative plot of gangwars which has come umpteen times. The dubbing quality is not that bad as critics pointed out - it could have got better if Kishore used his own regular voice but dubbing per se is not materially impacting the film's lack of substance. As for director Ranjith, he is good at visual imagery but doesn't mix storytelling with entertainment. The film is the most boring, collinear narrative ever on celluloid and that exposes the director's gaps in understanding a popular medium of entertainment. You can make a film about Tamils in Antarctica also but the emotions should surcharge the atmosphere you project on screen -  the director fails in that litmus test.

That leaves you to  wonder whether the hype of "Kabali" is justified. The film got released in 30 countries and must be the marketing hoax of the decade. More people have watched the trailer than those who voted for BRexit in UK. For Rajni and his fans, this film should be a tipping point in deciding where to go next. After working with  skilled directors like Shankar, Ravi Kumar and Suresh Krissna, Rajni is  wallowing in box-office disasters for the last three films even if the hype is not fading. He may be the most-watched Asian after Jackie Chan in films but like all star-studded phenomena, films like "Kabali" will only accelerate his fall from grace because of an unintelligent nexus between his marketing machinery and the feedback loop from well-wisher fans. Hubris and Debris are two sides of the same coin which greeted every legend in film industry, and Rajni cannot be exception to this rule despite an army of Bhakts. If you don't reinvent yourself or take precaution in story selection and content, even Spielberg and Cameron cannot lift your fortunes. Yes, you can continue to have self-congratulatory jokes that defy the laws of physics but unless everybody in the supply chain makes money on your movie, you will lose the ability as a bankable star. The cycle of Hubris and Debris has spared nobody from Dev Anand to Shammi Kapoor to Rajesh Khanna to Amitabh Bacchan to Mithun Chakraborty to Superstar Krishna to  Chiranjeevi. "Kabali" is a disappointment of the decade for Rajni fans but it can be a great opportunity for the aging Superstar to regroup his charisma for a better legacy and impressive retirement. But only if he introspects on why this movie sucks. You can rate the film sheerly on technicalities as average but since the overall content leaves you dazed and tired, you got to rate it down so as to raise the bar for Superstar.

Rating: 2.25/5

"Lion" (Telugu)

Tollywood's longest running dual role matinee idol Balakrishna tries to roar back with a different plot and a new director Satya Deva. The film was expected to to do roaring business given this is Balayya's first film as an MLA. It was expected to be a hat-trick victory for all those blazing guns of Nandamuri who sighted victory on "Pataas" and "Temper". But Alas! bad screenplay and lousy narration alongwith zombie treatment have spoilt it. Trisha and Radhika Apte are roped in for glamor but both looked a leaf too familiar from old foliage. Mani Sharma, the music director who gave Balayya second lease of life from "Samarasimha Reddy" onwards scores just one melodious song and lackadaisical BGM for this film - it looks as if he was imitating DSP's "Legend" score. Very disappointing score except the first song with Siva Balaji, Balayya and Archana.

What went wrong in this 137 minute film without a marked-out sequence, if you count out the countless number of stunts and blood-dripping violent deaths and identified flying objects jumping off the earth's axis? Story is under-developed, promising but bizarre in the end. Bose (Balayya) is a tech-savvy CBI officer notorious for raiding the most powerful men amassing public loots and gawdily displaying their stealth. His eccentric ways frame many powerful leaders including CM Prakash Raj who became a CM by killing Vijay Kumar in a "twisted" way. (That is about the most unique point in the film that even channel programming can be hacked to manufacture news). 

Balayya                                                                                                                                                                        is the Joint Director of CBI who is about to crack the "cold-blooded murder". Here is where director Satya infuses a piece out of sci-fi movies. What happens if the CBI officer creates an unhackable firewall that self-reveals itself to the CBI head-quarters whether the officer dies or not? And how Prakash Raj reconstructs a bizarre world that never existed around Balayya while trying to annihilate him through medical, mortal and unthinkable ways of torture and harrassment. All of this masterminding memes are revealed to us in multiple flashbacks before and after interval, sometimes through other characters and sometimes through the hero and the villain. And then, wonder of wonders, after all this mixture of Robin Cook and Sidney Sheldon plot mixture, comes a James Bond twist where the CBI officer does spectacular stunts - with feats galore. 

In one scene, he detects an injectible that is injected into his body so he smashes a mirror in the washroom and thaws out the damn piece. In another scene, he is caught by a speeding chopper out of a bazooka van and then to save himself cuts the ropes that bind him with scissors beneath his shoes ripping open. In almost every scene, the CBI officer has not come for a raid or slapping charges after investigation but actually exchange fire like some battlefield generals across borders.It is encouraging to think that the director has some futuristic vision of our CBI officers - who combine the skills of a Navy Seal with that of a Computer Geek and spice it up with the chivalry of a Jam Bond. Because Satya Deva is a first-time director, the film suffers a lot of impressario stunts and special effects and high-decibel violence with a sense of intelligence that is actually illogical and absurd. Because of the fatal fault in this bizarre storyline, Balayya looks without makeup till interval and then runs like a Gazille without much romance and emotions in the second half. 

The romance remains a non-starter because of the amnesiac Balayya in the first half, and the couple of  songs here and there hardly give relief to the audience. Only those echo-sounding dialogues can uplift a film of this nature but the director has written them himself so he sprinkles just a few impactful dialogues - hardly enough in a Balayya film. My favorite dialogue: "Subash Chandra Bose has no death date, and this Bose has no death"). Comedy by Ali and MS Narayana (how many films has he done before passing out?) doesn't fire. Prakash Raj is the most insipid villain seen in a long time. Despite some dazzling stunts and visual effects, the movie wears you out and bakes your brain. Balayya fans will have to wait for his  98th film or 100th film (with Boyapati Srinu) to have a hurrah after "Legend". There are interesting obvious resemblances the CBI director Laxminarayana's raid on Gali Janardhan Reddy but instead of building it up with the seriousness of a super sleuth, the film loses its way in the middle. Skip it if you can't take mindless violence and senseless story. Satya Deva needs to regroup for better treatment, story, emotions and screenplay..

Rating: 2/5

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