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                | Sultan 
                    - A review |   
                |   |  
                     SultanJeevi Rating: 3/5
 |   
                | Genre |   
                | Action |   
                | Jeevi 
                  Rating |   
                | 3/5 
                  (Three on a scale of five) |   
                | Cast |   
                | Bala 
                  Krishna, Krishna, Krishnam Raju, Rachana, Roja, Deepti Bhatnagar, 
                  Brahmanandam and Ravi Kumar. |   
                | Credits |   
                | Dialogues: Paruchuri Brothers Music: Koti
 Screenplay & Direction: Sarat
 Producer: M R V Prasad
 |   
                | Theatrical 
                  Release Date |   
                | 27th 
                  May 1999 |   
                | Caution |   
                | Please 
                  do not read the story, if you are going to watch the movie, 
                  as you will miss the initial suspense in this story. |   
                | Review |   
                | Titles 
                    start with a TV news reader reading out the atrocities done 
                    by sultan in the country. Soon after titles focus shift to 
                    CBCID head quarters where Sekhar (Krishna) is given the task 
                    of nabbing Sultan. Sekhar is patrolling a place where he finds 
                    an old Muslim with a broken down bike asking him for a help. 
                    He ignores him and later on old Musalman use that bike to 
                    assassin a politician. Sekhar waste no time to realize that 
                    the old Muslim is none but Sultan. Then the chase begins. 
                    There is a ferocious dialogue exchange between them that lead 
                    to a fight. At the end of the fight Sultan escape from Sekhar. 
                    
 Prithvi is doing patrolling in the forest with his subordinate 
                    brahnandam. Prithvi find a deer dead shot by Rachana and her 
                    bava. Rachana is caught as her bava give Prithvi a slip. After 
                    a little bit of kutchi kooing they fall in love and end up 
                    in marriage. Sultan is a very rough and unkind. Unlike other 
                    husbands he rapes his wife (Roja) while making love. He has 
                    a mistress, Deepti.
 
 Meantime, Sekhar is busy tracing Sultan. At a super market 
                    he finds Prithvi and Rachana and arrests Prithvi on the spot. 
                    Sekhar keeps Prithvi at an unidentified place and harasses 
                    him to reveal the secrets. Prithvi is clueless about why he 
                    is getting beaten up. Rachana raises the issue of her hubby 
                    disappearing with mahila shangha's and shake the assembly 
                    with dharna. Government transfers the case from CBCID to CID. 
                    Mustafa is a CID officer. The day he was put on the mission, 
                    Mustafa gets a rude shock in the form of bomb from Sultan 
                    that he manages to escape. Sultan does in a style by asking 
                    him for light before bombing him. Thereby Mustafa gets confident 
                    that Prithvi and Sultan are two different persons. Meantime, 
                    Sekhar is having a gala time torturing the poor chap Prithvi. 
                    Mustafa fly down to Hyderabad to meet Sekhar and try to convince 
                    Sultan and Prithvi are lookalikes.
 
 *Interval*
 
 Prithvi's mother confesses in police station that Prithvi 
                    is the only son and she does not have any twin. Later on Sekhar 
                    and Mustafa(SM) finds out that Prithvi's mother adapted prithvi 
                    from the mother of Sultan for a paltry sum of Rs 1000/-. Now 
                    SM finds a strategy to nab Sultan by using Prithvi as a weapon. 
                    They take him to Andaman Island. Poor Prithvi is unaware that 
                    these guys(SM) know the truth and are still making him a captive. 
                    Prithvi tries to escape from the captivity of SM only to be 
                    caught by SM in the middle of the sea. SM tells Prithvi the 
                    history and asks him to help them out in the mission. Then 
                    Prithvi rebels by asking them why should he help them out? 
                    Then Desa Bhakti song follows and end of it SM forms SMP. 
                    Now Pritvi is ready for the mission with the help of training 
                    by SM on combating tactics.
 
 Meantime Rachana spots Sultan and mistakes him for Prithvi. 
                    SMP starts their mission with tracing Deepti Bhatnagar, who 
                    later dies taking suicide pill. Prithvi seduces her to get 
                    the whereabouts of Sultan. Prithvi explores sultan house. 
                    In no time Sultan realizes that some this is amiss. He immediately 
                    contacts his mom and asks her to come out clean about his 
                    birth. After knowing that prithvi is his brother and then 
                    realizing the torture he made on his wife and mom, he send 
                    Roja with a suitcase with all the gold biscuits and stuff 
                    to SMP that he is ready to surrender. As expected by us, Suitcase 
                    turns out to be nothing but a bomb. Mustafa avoids it by throwing 
                    the suitcase out. Later on with the help of Roja SPM starts 
                    searching Sultan hideouts. In this process Ravi Babu (Right 
                    hand of Sultan) kills Roja and Mustafa before getting himself 
                    killed.
 
 Prithvi tastes his own medicine when Sultan go to Prithvi's 
                    home and takes Rachana out to his Den. Climax is all set now 
                    with SP gets a threatening call by Sultan to surrender themselves 
                    and give him one million dollars as the ransom. Sultan also 
                    warns that he is going to bomb all the MLA's and MP's in India 
                    if one million dollars are not given to him. During the climax 
                    Sultan realizes that foreign militants used him as the pawn 
                    in the destruction process of India. So the focus shifts to 
                    two of the foreign militants that are present at the climax 
                    scene, luckily.
 
 We have PS fighting tirelessly with militants, as Sultan is 
                    busy with making the missiles targeted on all cites futile. 
                    Surprise of the climax is that Sultan mother stabs Sultan, 
                    as she was not aware that Sultan is a changed man now. After 
                    a climax of 15 minutes audiences get a breather as Prithvi 
                    and Sekhar remains unconquered.
 |   
                | Performance |   
                | Actors: 
                  Balaiah excelled well in two roles very well. Sultan character 
                  does have the shades of Yuvarathna Rana. Prithvi's character 
                  is lovable. Balaiah get-up's in this movie needs a special praise. 
                  Krishna did his role with ease. He is as smart as ever in his 
                  character, which need mental smartness too. Krishnam Raju did 
                  his cameo role with professionalism. Rachana is given most of 
                  the lady portion. She does look sexy and sensible. Roja acted 
                  well in her character that is limited to getting raped by her 
                  hubby Sultan in a deglamorized role. Deepti Bhatnagar did her 
                  small role with elan. Brahmanandam is just used in a few scenes. 
 Direction and Screenplay: Director did not do justice 
                  to the movie. He tried his best, may be. So far his movies are 
                  of family dramas. For the first time he directed an action movie, 
                  that is too with three stalwarts as heroes and four roles play 
                  by them. Sarat is known for his sentimental scenes in his movies, 
                  which are amiss in Sultan. Too many fights are also another 
                  draw back to the movie. There is no comedy in the movie except 
                  for a few brahmanandam scenes and Krishna Trio Andamaan episode.
 
 Screenplay: Screenplay is good in this movie unto interval. 
                  But after interval things seems to be getting mixed up. One 
                  has to really concentrate to coordinate with four major characters 
                  in this movie.
 
 Dialogues: Dialogues are very good, but at a few scenes. 
                  Whenever it is possible Paruchuri brothers' scripted very powerful 
                  dialogues for Balaiah-Krishna face/off. Sultan's Hindi dialogues 
                  are powerful.
 
 
 |   
                | Songs |   
                | Song 
                  One: 'Chima Chima' …. It's a slow song between Balaiah and 
                  Rachana. There are no steps in this song. Shot at scenic locales 
                  of TalaKona forest. 
 Song Two: 'Nandi Konda' …. It's a dancing song for Saltan 
                  and deepti. Balaiah done a variety steps in this song. This 
                  song is the best one in Sultan with good picturization and choreography.
 
 Song Three: 'Shabba Shabba' ….. Sultan dances with Arabic 
                  damsels in Dubai. Shot in Annapurna Sets.
 
 Song Four: 'Panchadara Chettumeda' …… Balaiah dances 
                  with Rachana in Kulu Manali.
 
 Song Five: 'Janaganamana' ….. Krishnam and Krishnam 
                  Raju tells Balaiah to join the mission to save India from sultan. 
                  This song is a patriotic song that is shot at Andaman. You can 
                  see andaman central jail as the backdrop for this song. This 
                  song is very inspirational one.
 
 Song Six: 'O Kaliki Rama Chiluka' …. This song is for 
                  Roja and Sultan. This is the favorite song of all audio listeners. 
                  This song is shot at Annapurna studio sets. It would have given 
                  a great effect in picturization if this song were shot in the 
                  outdoors.
 |   
                | Analysis |   
                | Sultan 
                  has a very powerful story that is not scripted well. 'Sultan' 
                  character is a strange one. Sultan is not a Muslim by birth. 
                  He decides his name as sultan as Sultan is synonymous to King. 
                  His aim is to make money, bed the damsels, and booze away to 
                  glory. His objective of life is to become Dictator for India. 
                  This is a negative point of movie. It defies logic. This role 
                  is not like that of Robin Hood's, which loots rich money to 
                  serves the poor. Here Sultan loots money to amass wealth. His 
                  childhood experiences provoked him to become a terrorist. But 
                  this terrorist does not have goal for the country. He is greedy 
                  for 3 W's. One more this is that SULTAN is a true multi-starrer. 
                  So it become increasingly difficult to accommodate 4 important 
                  roles without upsetting the rhythm. First half is full of excitement 
                  and suspense. Second half is a little boring. Twists are good. 
                  Songs are nice. Fights are more. Balaiah different get-up's 
                  and styles are good. About the box-office performance…. Well 
                  we have to wait and see how Andhra Audiences script the box-office 
                  future of Sultan. |   
                | >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>End 
                    of Sultan Review |  |