Director Rajamouli has flair for action and good song picturizations but unfortunately developed an habit of pitting his ‘protagonist’ against antagonists in different states in his last few films. This time he chose Madhya Pradesh for his latest cop story but made a mockery of audience intelligence by making his characters speak Telugu even in Chambal valley (disclaimer notwithstanding)and left few gaps in the script unplugged. It could go down as one of the poor scripts in director's careerprofile. Even the characters lack ‘recall value’ since most of them were mere ‘caricatures’. Agreed that it’s a commercial film but forcing bad scripts in the guise of relating to the audience is just unpardonable(hope viewers vouch my argument). Its success would have raised eyebrows of many a sensible viewer or is it anyway an indication of our deteriorating taste.(If the later is true then we should blame ourselves than the makers for sub-standard Telugu cinema).

Directors place their stories in virgin locales to capture the ‘flavour’ and ‘issues’ of that region to give audience a ‘fresh’ theme but Rajamouli fails to take up the challenge. Instead relies on clichéd issues (as seen in innumerable cop films) that can happen anywhere to carry him through. Director seems to be confused about whom he should piggy ride on- on cop or on the crook. But regrettably bets his money on the later and dilutes the significance a daredevil cop. After establishing the cop as fear-less and duty bound he abruptly ends his innings after making him to address few trivial issues before baddies beat him to death. Director fails to balance between two contrasting protagonists and unnecessarily glorifies petty acts of a thief who indulges in weird acts like tonsuring women for few bucks. Invariably the title role is sacrificed at the altar of entertainment that too cheap entertainment. Even the transition of a crook to upright cop is unconvincing. Another big joke of the film is the kid girl accepting a ‘stranger’ as her father even without an iota of doubt. Ridiculing the ‘father-daughter’ relationship were ‘vibrations’ count more than mere similar looks. Director’s attempt to dramatize their ‘relationship’ with few touching moments goes in vain as there relationship is highly contrived. Less said the better about Anushka since she seems to be hell-bent on spoiling her ‘life’ by chasing a fraud. Barring a brief period of a righteous ways in Ravi Teja’s life she decides to spend her life with a cheat.

Instead of digging out novel plots, director Rajamouli has opted for a safe route of changing the antagonists for his star-centric movies. Undoubtedly our senior directors killed Telugu cinema with their mindless potboilers so we hoped that new generation directors would make intelligent and tasteful cinema. Pathetically they are pushing it further down. (Don’t blame us if we patronize other language films like last year). Its high time young makers understand the taste of maturing audience or get doomed.

More Different Perspectives by Friendly Viewer:
• Don (Hindi)
• Pokiri
• Stalin
• Bommarillu

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