Story
On the day of the wedding of the daughter of AP’s CM, she elopes with the son of Telangana CM. A killer is hired by AP CM to assassinate Telangana CM and bring his daughter back. Raju is a student in political sciences in a university in Hyderabad where the daughter of Telangana CM (Sreeleela) also studies. Ramakrishna Raju is a billionaire industrialist who is also very honest. He is put in jail by the CM. Rest of the story is all about how Raju is pulled in this war between CMs and also who Skanda is.

Artists Performance

Ram Pothineni does a complete makeover in this movie. Gains weight, yet looks very dashing. His make-up and diction for the furious character is magnificent. He is truly a delight to any director. He can look lovely when the director wants him to be and he can look menacing when needed. This is his career’s best film in terms of performance. This film will surely take him close to the masses. Sreeleela is pretty good, but has a limited scope. Saiee Manjrekar plays an important role and she is good. Srikanth gets a decent role and performs well. Prince Cecil and Prabhakar play roles of henchmen to CM. Sharath Lohithaswa and Ajay Purkar play the roles of CM. Daggubati Raja is fine as the hero’s father. Prithiveeraj has donned the role of a national-level mediator/strategist and he is good. Shravan is good as a cop. Gauthami and Indraja make their presence felt. Urvashi Rautela did a special song.

Story - screenplay - direction: All of Boyapati Sreenu’s films are about a beautiful message. However, there will be a lot of violence to deliver this message. Skanda film too is about family relationships. It’s about a family staying together. It’s about a son who chooses to stay with parents in their village despite being a university topper at Stanford University, California. Boyapati has been handling two things pretty well since his first film - action elements (violence) and family emotions. He trusts in these two factors and goes to extremes to deliver these. For this film too, he has gone to the extreme extent to deliver action episodes. This film is his most violent film till date. Fights do stand out distinctively in the film. A sentiment scene (father-son binding) in the 2nd half clicked. This film aimed at hardcore masses and it clicks with them. There are political references in the film.

Among the fights, these two techniques standout

1. A sword coming out of the torn jeans pants.
2. Hero breaks the bow into two pieces to use them as two swords.

I know that logics go for a toss in Boyapati films, still these following questions came to my mind

1. Since these two CMs are corrupt and friends in crimes, why should their kids elope? They could have asked their parents to marry them off as it helps to consolidate power for the fathers too.
2.Why would a daughter of an idealistic billionaire businessman fall for a rough-looking assassin. Maybe Skanda-2 will explain.

Other departments: All dance-oriented songs are good because of energetic dances by Ram. Background music is okay, but Thaman should seriously consider reducing decibel levels. Cinematography by Santosh Detake is very good. It’s colorful in most of the scenes and uses shades of brown/gold towards the climax. Dialogues by M Rathnam are fine (sometimes a little over-dramatic). Action choreographer Stun Shiva has composed fights very violently. They look ultra violent because guns are used very less, most of the fights involve swords. It's like watching fights in films of medieval times (like 300 movie) where guns are not used. Production design by AS Prakash is good (especially weapons design). Production values of the film are grand.

Analysis: Skanda is a true-blue Boyapati Sreenu. It offers what you expect from him - ultra violent action and over-dramatised family elements. Plus points are mass elements, Ram and fights. On the flipside, the emotional connection should have been strong. If we look at Akhanda, the character of Akhanda is wonderfully introduced and in the beginning itself we are told about the purpose of the character. In Skanda, it has a limited screen space and it is used as a surprise element. Despite some shortcomings, Skanda has mass elements that connect with the target audiences.