"Bigil" (Tamil)/ "Whistle" (Telugu) Film Review

"Bigil" is a fine example of how a blockbuster unfolds and ends with 178 minutes of Vijayana. Yes, its a sports film and also has gangster movie shades. Hence, you see a combo of "Chak De" and "Baasha". Director Atlee has given a pass to many rules of soccer game but the energy levels never drop - infact the second half is the brightest second half ever seen in recent films. Vijay shines well both as father and son Bigil and this must be his finest performance. BGM by AR Rahman and almost all the songs scored are gold-diggers which will haunt you long. Go for 'Bigil' ('Whistle' in Telugu) even if you are not a Vijay fan. From the times of doing remakes of Mahesh Babu films and doing chocolate boy films, Vijay has come a long way. As for Atlee who is now sought after by the likes of Shah Rukh Khan and NTR Jr to direct films for them, this is crowning glory. If only the first half is pruned a bit, and those over-the-top football moments edited out, "Bigel" would have been a cult classic. The highlight of the film is the sequence of getting a housewife and an acid attack victim into the team - much impact without much ado there. Despite the director and the hero flaunting their religious leanings in close camera shots, the film will mint its way to the top this year at least in Tamil belt. 

Rating: 3.25/5
 
#Vijay #Bigil #Whistle #Kollywood #Tollywood #ARRahman

“Syraa” (Telugu/Hindi/Tamil/Kannada) film review

Director Surendar Reddy has given an exciting and energetic twist to Megastar Chiranjeevi’s most ambitious project to date about Pre-Independent India’s forgotten freedom fighter Syraa Narasimha Reddy. With an iconic star cast assembled from Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu and Bhojpuri film industries, Surendar weaves a inspiring and pacy, sheer pacy narrative in 170 minutes about the times before Sepoy Mutiny or Rani Lakshmi Bhai with some highly convoluted cinematic liberties.  Is it watchable? Absolutely, you will not sit restless even for a minute. Is it convincing? Yes, even if you nod in dissent because the director doesn’t let the action scenes steal the intensity and depth of emotions. Until the interval bang, the film builds steady tempo but after that assumes an unstoppable momentum right to the finish - never letting any scene go waste in highlighting the steadfast patriotism and leadership qualities of Syraa in galvanising other satraps and the masses into revolting against the British. To be fair, the film has always hid the making and the production values in the shooting phase and that makes watching the film an epic cinematic  experience truly worth it. 

Authentically, we may have our doubts about the claim that Syraa single-handedly eliminated 10,000 British soldiers but the bone-chilling sequences of his rise and his bradvado in death deserve to be well-told and captured with all the paraphernalia that a Tollywood film can afford. From that standpoint, #Syraa is another Pyrrhic victory for how good an action film about a lesser-known freedom fighter can be without the fuss about a Mangal Pandey or a Manikarnika or the distractions of “Thugs of Hindoostan”. #Syraa is a winner in all departments and deserves to be more widely watched for the crafts in display. Ratnavelu’s cinematography, Julius Packam’s background score and Amit Trivedi’s high-pitch compositions all stand out in enhancing the dramatic appeal of the script.  There are quite a few spectacular moments which elevate the wow factor of the film. What deserves mention is that, Chiranjeevi and Ramcharan gave such free hand to director Surendar Reddy in extracting an intense portrayal of a warlord who tames the British in his own crude ways before more follow. Having two fair damsels like Tamannaah and Nayanataara, nothing stops Chiranjeevi from serenading them in dream sequences with silly steps but no, he didn’t and that raised the dignity and stature of the megastar in submitting himself to the script in his 151st film. Entries by special stars Amitabh Bachchan, Sudeep, Vijay Sethupathy, Jagapathi Babu, keep the excitement alive and the variety high, their exits equally dramatic and make you thirst for more. For a change, Tamannaah outshines Nayanataara. - a rarity considering the experience of the latter and the girlish tendencies of the former. Chiranjeevi delivers yet another mature and convincing performance as Syraa N Reddy, his dialogues are few, his emoting with eyes powerful and his stunts well-worth it. For someone who was obsessed with telling the tale of Syraa, he deserves credit but for whom the Telugu would have lost another opportunity to hear about another freedom fighter who never entered folklore. Some of the dialogues by Sai Madhav embellished by Parachuri brothers were epic but some more mention about the contemporaries and about the economic hardships of the Telugu would have added insights. Surprisingly, production values of the film stand out without much fuss -  a rare feat considering Surendar Reddy has never before directed a historical or a mythological. The film’s only shortfall is the degree of skulduggery and atavistic violence which perhaps is justified given the time of the protagonist. As the titles roll on, we noticed only one glaring omission of the long list of freedom fighters who took the mantle on after the first war of independence - Veer Savarkar. How did they miss him? On the whole, a well-made film and watchable once. Watch it for the screen presence of Megastar and many other megastars who set the screen on fire with great performances. Even if you like nothing about the star cast, the story itself will draw you in from the first frame. Vouch for it.

#Rating 3.75/5

#Syraa #SyraaNarasimhaReddy #MegastarChiranjeevi #AmitabhBachchan #VijaySethupathy #Sudeep #JagapathiBabu #SurendarReddy #AmitTrivedi #Tamannah #Nayanataara #JuliusPackam #Tollywood #Bollywood #FreedomFighters

"Gaddalakonda Ganesh" (Telugu) Movie Review

"GG" is a crude attempt to showcase the transformative power of cinema on hard-core criminals, if at all. Varun Tej plays the infamous and cold-blooded gangster who is chased by an aspiring Assistant Director (played by Atharvaa) to make a larger-than-life film on his life. How Good is it? It's a long 173 minute watch which has flashes of brilliance in second half and around interval bang with good performance by Varun Tej and great performance by Atharvaa (who has better screen presence). The film's chief fault is the dosage of violence and adult-content in the first half which should deter family audience and kids away and is longer by at least 25 minutes. Sans that, the film takes off in the second half with pace, energy and twists and surcharged emotions. 

What redeems the film is the build-up in the second half and the balance achieved by Harish Shankar to give equal footage to the hero of the film who wants to highlight the "villain" of the film as the hero - this rarely happens in star films. The love angle of Pooja Hegde and the remix hit from "Devata" gives good relief from the tiring violence but still the soul of the original song is not transmitted - as it happens in most remix songs. Varun looks menacing in his portrayal but could have used a standard one-liner to register mass-appeal presence - its a missed opportunity. The Mega Factory brandsters have done the right thing by anointing Varun Tej in titles as Mega "Prince" because Varun is the closest the Mega factory have to Prince Mahesh Babu. The film can pull more masses into building the market-cap for Varun Tej given the brighter second half. As it is, Varun has had better luck amongst the next-gen of Mega family and this could still achieve more. Harish Shankar has tweaked the mass elements of "Jigarthanda" and given good uplift to both Varun Tej and Atharvaa who is the real show-stealer. Music by Mickey J Meyer is forgettable and inept. Entertaining but could have been cleaner and crisper.
Rating: 2.75/5
#GaddalakondaGanesh #VarunTej #Atharvaa

"Nani's GangLeader" (Telugu)

Once in a while, a Telugu film comes with a winning script which defies genre, packs a punch and loads of entertainment in each scene, pulls you deep inside a pacy narrative with great story-telling, energetic performances and hits the bulls' eye with a non-formulaic approach. Director Vikram K Kumar is known for making films where the dimension of time is sliced in clock-wise and anti-clock-wise directions often confusing the viewers without any defined storyline. But in NG, he surprises us with a well-written script and simpler narrative nuanced as the story unfolds; he puts an unthinkable starcast and concocts an indigenous but rare story that can only happen in crime-fiction novels. Yet, the output is engaging, outrageous, funny and thoroughly entertaining, joined by cinematic twists and a social cause at the end. The story has an audacious premise to start with - a gang of five different-aged females come together to polish off a deadly killer who killed one each of their respective members. Enter Naani, the gang-leader who comes with his own agenda who offers to help the gang reach their targeted villain. What conspires later is a premium range of thrills audiences haven't been treated before in a long-time with lots of fun and fluent narration. The last time I experienced new thrills of this variety was when I watched Gunnam Gangaraju's "Aithe" which was a path-breaking film defying all genres and yet wholesomely entertaining. NG is still a few notches below Yeleti's "Aithe" but nevertheless good to watch once.

Naani pulls off another sensational performance sublimating his screen-presence to accommodate senior talents like Lakshmi and Sharanya and also sharing his screen space with a villain Karthikeya who is at his swashbuckling best. There are moments when Karthikeya steals the show over Naani, Lakshmi dominates Naani with her inimitable style of acting.   In over 157 minutes, director weaves a predictable story with intensity and adrenalin-pumping action - romantic track is subtle and neat. He takes time to build the tempo in the first half but makes up for lost time with a brilliant climax. Technically, the film should have been a clean "U" certificate except for the gaffe in the first half and second half about male dating - oops...it still draws good laughs thanks to Vennela Kishore. Naani deserves a pat for choosing a film where story is the real hero - no swagger, no female skin-show, no indulgent talk. His filmography reminds you of the Chiranjeevi's first fifty films where story defined everything - a lesson here for all the rising stars, superstars, power stars, omega stars and rebel stars whose self-centered dialogues and narcissistic camera angles have been depriving the audiences of great cinema. Naveen Nooli's editing seems like a masterclass in editing and provides good support to Anirudh's music score. There are only four songs in the film but the pacing of the songs and the BGM with music leveraged out of the four tunes make it a draw. After "Jersey", this looks like a film which will keep the cash registers ringing for Nani. Karthikeya, the hero who looks like an Adonis perhaps gets the most stylish villain role that Tollywood hasn't seen for a while. By insisting on better shot-selection and introduction and build-up of his character, Karthikeya steals thunder from Nani in the same way Vijay Deverekonda did in "Evade Subramanyam". Flaws of logic permeate the script on why police are kept in the dark, and how banks share CCTV footage so easily and so on. Despite all that and the predictability of the film, a Paisa-vasool film and a great family entertainer. Must watch.

Rating: 3.5/5

#Nani'sGangLeader #GangLeader #Nani #Lakshmi #Saranya #VikramKKumar #VennelaKishore #Anirudh #NaveenNooli #MaitriFilms #Tollywood #NaturalStarNani #NaaniGangLeader #NanisGangLeader

"Saaho" (Telugu/Hindi/Tamil/Malayalam)

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

"Mission Mangal" (Hindi Film Review)

ISRO's evolution of the last fifty years since inception couldn't have been better celebrated than the successful Mission Mangalyaan circa 2014. The film "Mission Mangal" captures that exciting milestone in 133 minutes of unbridled entertainment laced with energetic screenplay, peppy starcast and loads of cinematic Pax Indiana that will get animal spirits of "Made in India" back roaring. And who better to drive the narrative than Akshay Kumar, our hero for films with patriotic fervor releasing on national holidays - a metrosexual version of Manoj Kumar!

Director R.Balki, the creative brain behind the film helps director Jagan Shakti pace a well-written script which has a good prologue, middle story and an epic finish which though predictable gives some tense moments before the Mission becomes a success lauded by the world including NASA. But if you were to chronicle the saga of how a resource-starved ISRO built this mission like a bootstrapping startup entrepreneur, you need more cinematic ammunition than just being a minutuaeing National Geographic docu-maker. That is provided by a killer cast of two men and four women (played by the likes of Tapsee Pannu, Nithya Menen, Sonakshi Sinha, Sharmaan Joshi) and the worlds they inhabit (at home and in their minds) - they create a panorama of world views which first limit the mission and later unbottle their true potential for Mission Mars. But Akshay Kumar as Mission Director needs a shepherd to rein in these micro-Indians who run amok with their own agendas - one wants to migrate to NASA, one believes in astrology and was told to avoid Mangal planet if he has to get married, one just wants to pass time to vest superannuation benefits, one just underwent infertility treatment to become a mom, one wants to re-unite with her Army husband and so on. That shepherding is done brilliantly by Vidya Balan, let's call her the master of the project who steers the team to meet the deadlines and the deliverables. With her mercurial and multi-nuanced acting, Vidya Balan steals the show one more time acing up each scene with her own inimitable style - sparkling eyes, face as a pointer and modulation worth its weight in gold. She fights the many battles shown in the film that Indians, argumentative Indians fight every day in life with their biases, fears, doubts, naysaying beliefs, debilitating concepts at home and office - whether it's her son turning to Islam out of blind love of aping AR Rahman or a retiree who sees Mission Mangal as just as a job not as a mission.

Director Jagan Shakti and writer R.Balki must be complimented for creating a multi-layered script that shows India as an improbable bundle of flaws and contradictions to be overcome before anything great can ever be achieved - it is a cinematic feat that makes Space Mission theme seem more colorful and exciting to watch than a tik tok documentary reel. In between there are excursions into astrology (thought not well-explored because Astrologers in India predicted everything from World Wars to World Cup defeat in Semi Finals to Kumaragowda government collapse in Karnataka and are a happy punching bag in the quest for "scientific temper"), parenting (let the new gen be themselves!), call of duty (why any job than serving in army is no less!), bootstrapping (how long ISRO pulls off financial miracles without going public or crowd-funding!)and so on. The film is  nothing short of achieving a miracle in convincing pundits and masses about the odds that ISRO goes through before you see a tense countdown of -15 on live TV. Akshay Kumar has given another fine performance of being a Director who takes all the brickbats on failures and then pats the team when met with success - those one-liner songs of Dev Anand hummed at critical points in the film tell a lot through hidden subtexts, do not miss them! Music by Amit Trivedi gives the exhilarating fuel needed to punctuate the right emotions throughout - one hardly feels a lag moment ever and the subtitles for Hindi is a welcome initiative to ensure nothing lost in translation. Cinematography by Ravi Varma and the VFX are also quite pleasing. A few more outer world shots would have made the film more immersive in experience.

Without explaining the complexity of fuel tanks and orbiters and what goes on in rocket science, the directorial team uses simpler narratives of how the final execution of Mission Mars looks like in the initial scenes to make the audience tether to a surcharge of emotions later and then make them go through the drama and believe some outlandish logic too (like using wolverine clothing for the outer covering and using non-recyclable plastic as light-weight fuel and so on!).

On the whole, the film is immensely watchable and achieves multiple goals of appreciating what ISRO does without sounding theoretical or boring. Hollywood has paid more tributes to NASA  and made space shuttle travel a routine affair! Instead of making looney comic stories about life on moon (like some Telugu films did), this is a good attempt to bridge the gap between Astronomy and Public. A film like this will do more education than a hundred trips to Birla Planetorium.   

Rating: 3.75/5

#MissionMangal #RBalki #JaganShakti #AkshayKumar #AmitTrivedi #VidyaBalan #RaviVarman #ISRO #SpaceMovies #MissionMars #NASA #IndianSpaceMission #Chandrayaan2

"Dear Comrade" (Telugu/Tamil/Malayalam/Kannada) Film Review

The most hyped Vijay Deverekonda in recent times comes with an elaborate buildout of 169 minutes about a love story which has many overt and subtextual messages - of which the main message is about how a lady cricketer fights sexual harassment at work with help of her lover who stands like a wall for her - whom everyone calls "Dear Comrade". Bharat Kamma directs this colorful film with dazzling cinematography and enchanting musical score by Justin Prabhakaran. The film takes you into the world of Bobby and Lilly (played by Vijay Deverekonda and Rashmika) whose journey has many fateful turns, most of them predictable and self-created. Performances-wise, the film's honors go to Rashmika first and Vijay Deverekonda next for raising the bar. Rashmika gets a role of a lifetime which even top-paid heroines don't enjoy these days, she seems to speak a lot with her eyes and packs quite a punch with classy costumes and neat acting without much ado. Vijay must be complimented for taking on a role that supports the heroine's character throughout.

How good is the film? To be fair, the treatment is honest and leisurely but the director misses out in leveraging the right mix of emotions at crucial moments. The first half is painfully slow and listless, takes too much time to establish the character of Bobby and Lilly, their divergent paths, their friends and their world views with too many songs. The number of songs and scenes in the college could have been cut down brutally just like the 'canteen song' which got removed n the film. After a series of lovely films on cricket like "Jersey" and "Majili", here's an opportunity to create a feast of visuals about Women's cricket (and what ails it from taking off?) but crucial moments fall flat as the director jumps-cut to another scene. Like in the first half, when Lilly begs to play in gully cricket played by the boys, the director should have shown how she batted then itself instead of jumping to the stadium scene where she plays with a flourish to win in a big match. Cricket is an adrenalin-pumping game for Indians which can surcharge emotions in any scene but in the entire second half, Lilly's cricketing exploits were missing in action. Moments like this were under-capitalized which makes the film drop into a lower orbit of a routine love story where hero's antics are shown more mileage than a lady cricketer's struggles to build her dream innings. In both the first and second half, many scenes give you a deja vu sense of earlier films of Vijay like "Evade Subramanyam", "Geeta Govindam" and "Arjun Reddy"; most of the early scenes seem a modern version of Nagarjuna's "Shiva". For Vijay Deverekonda, this film doesn't add much to his powerhouse acting skills that he seems to possess because at times he subtracts the film's intensity with his performance. Focus on him in the first half is the fatal flaw which deprives the audience of that extra wow factor. Add to that there is an unexplained inconsistency towards the end where the hero is unrepentant, impulsive and emotional throughout the film but capitulates to admission of guilt in the end in a crucial courtroom scene - could that be better handled to raise the heroism quotient or was it necessary to get the "heroininism" we leave at that. Despite that Vijay's histrionics and stunts come out good but he has to quickly re-invent himself to change the diction and body language lest it fall into the zone of lazy acting, for want of variety. His dancing skills have definitely got better, it must be said.

Technically, film's editing and dialogue-writing departments are lackluster and could have done a lot better with sharpness. Director Bharat Kamma has good sensibilities to create stories with strong underlying messages but he has to somewhere overcome a struggle between commercial intensity and visual aesthetics a'la Mani Ratnam. The films which became cult classics are usually films with intensity, laser-sharp focus on main plot without detours and distractions. Unfortunately, "Dear Comrade" touches upon many small themes like student politics, communism, anger-management, career aspirations of modern lovers and finally kicks the can down too late with the main theme of sexual harassment in cricket's highest echelons. If this was driven home earlier, it would have created a massive impact. It doesn't. Music composer Justin Prabhakaran deserves a hat-tip - his album will sail through the tunnel of time for its versatility and melody. His music has more maturity, finesse and balance between Indian and Western music than some of the new-age composers we have heard. His BGM with half-violin strings and rhythmic percussions shows his class and makes it one of the most exciting scores in recent times. One cameo that stands out is co-producer Yash Rangineni's outburst as a BCCI chairman - that whole episode upholds the dignity and seriousness of the world's richest cricketing body. On the whole, you can watch it but once though with lots of patience but don't go with great expectations and let it sponge on you.

Rating: 2.75/5

#DearComdrade #RashmikaMadanna #VijayDeverekonda #YashRangineni #BigBenCinemas #MytriMovieMakers #JustinPrabhakaran #Tolllywood #Mollywood #Kollywood #Sandalwood #Telugufilms