How do you evaluate 171 minutes of action flick laced with stunning background score, melodious songs, deafening-decibel graphic violence amidst a neat romantic track between Shraddha Kapoor and Prabhas, and intense villains strategically chosen from various languages? It is a mixed bag, and half-way through you realize you are in a dead-slow track with convoluted story-line which defies logic - its a story of a team of cops who set out to unmask the great gangster group of a walled city called Waji City (where the hell is this sky-scraper paradise?). The twists of director Sujith's screenplay are all about who is the real cop, who is fake, who is under-cover and who is finally uncovered.
As you see, there is limited room for maneuvre in the story plot - you will have to introduce a bevy of villains, the team of investigators, the hero, the heroine and then build the interplay with some concocted humor that doesn't register. Within the framework imposed by the director, and that is the right thing to evaluate the film rather than get swayed by the memes unleashed by anti-"rebel" forces on the social media, Sujith does a neat job in giving us an authentic film without the bells-and-whistles as seen in a "Dhoom" franchisee or the ultra-sophisticated stunts of a MI series. He is aided by two technicians who give life-support to the skeletal script - Ghibran's BGM score and Madhie's cinematography. Both of them give the surreal texture, feel and mood-mixing to the various high-octane scenes of the film. Subtract Ghibran's score from the film and see the movie rating drop by 1.5 points - his work is so priceless in the film with a range of techno-instrumentation.
Who fails Sujith? It is the editor Sreekar Prasad who seems to have gone for many breaks instead of chopping chunks of mindless violence. You don't need too many stunts to project heroism and Prabhas has shown it so well in "Mirchi" his last film before the blockbusterization of his career started. These stunts, and many dragging scenes in the first half make it boring to watch - and they don't sit easy with whatever little messaging Sujith and Prabhas wanted to give.
The best part of the film is not Prabhas but "others" including a cute-looking Shraddha Kapoor who gets her most meaty role as a cop who can also prance around in vest-applied shining skin in exotic bridges wedged between snow-capped mountain ranges. But the real "others" who shine the most are Arun Vijay, Prakash Rawalade and Chunky Pandey. Normally, Tollywood directors can inter-mix three dozen villains in six frames without anyone being remembered beyond their names but Sujith has characterized each of the mean-looking men so well that every one of them right from the man who played villain in "Pandem Kodi" to Mandira Bedi to the one who played the bad guy in "Chatrapati" has a space to die for in the film - and that is no mean feat. Entertainment cannot be a given in a film of this genre - fans and reviewers must note.
Prabhas could have easily settled for a cool Telugu film after the monstrous success of "Baahubali" but he re-invested another 1000 days into the making of "Saaho" and backed it with his home production team. Hitherto, nobody from the South - Kamal Hasan, Rajinikanth, Chiranjeevi, Venkatesh, Nagarjuna, Dhanush or Rana Daggubati - has ever scaled this kind of altitude with so much audacity before - with back-to-beat hype. Even if the film fails to deliver as per the audience's expectations, Prabhas deserves a pat - so what if he fails grand. He could have shied away like NTR or Mahesh Babu but he stood there like a rock knowing all the brickbats and bouquets will come his way. Those few dialogues in the film about hitting six out of the park in a stadium or that dialogue by Murali Sharma that Saaho is like a feel-good ad that comes before a film - visuals can be disturbing even if the content is good - they pretty sum up South India's most audacious challenge to Bollywood. No, this is not as bad as "Rebel". No, this is not as repetitive as "Dhoom". No, this is not as bad as "2.0". No, this is not as bad a film as the herds are branding. If you can sit through the first half till the first twist comes, you may find the second half interesting and pleasing to watch, never mind the elaborate overlay of action stunt excesses that the director relies upon. A reviewer cannot convince anybody but having seen far more worse films from the South including Shankar's "I" or Muragadoss's "Spyder" - I must say this: the makers of the film UV Creations didn't hide the genre of the film in the teaser, they didn't mislead the audience in the trailer (unlike Shankar's "I" where a lion-man is shown as if it is the third role of the hero), they never projected it as a message-oriented film, they gave the right high-octave moments of the film without giving away the plot till the movie released. They packed quite a punch in this screenplay based film. For all that and taking away what could have been missed opportunity, I stick to my rating. Audience can check my ratings of other Prabhas films on my blog and elsewhere where my reviews abound.
Go with an open mind, and decide if you can experience the thrills of an action thriller.
Rating: 2.75/5
#Saaho #Prabhas #Sujith #Ghibran #ShraddaKapoor #ArunVijay #ChunkyPandey #PrakashRawalade #JackieShroff #MandiraBedi
