Director’s inefficiency gives another flop to Sivaji

These days, mere love stories are not really getting gelled well with the audiences with more and more young and tender faces facing the camera. The film makers are trying to make a mix of love with action backdrop. Debutant director Nagendra Kumar made an attempt to experiment one such film with Sivaji as hero. In order to attract the youth and mass audiences, he brought a Mumbai girl Kaveri Jha, who had no qualms to expose to the possible extent and give a romantic feel in her combination scenes with the hero. She is not too glamorous and at the same time, her exposure went unnoticed because of the immaturity of the director in utilising her in a proper manner.

Sanjay Sastri (Sivaji) is from a middle class family. He completes his M Sc Ph D and was a gold medallist too. He had an ambition to marry a rich NRI girl so that he could happily settle in his life. Moreover, he is a good golfer and a champion too. The daughter of a billionaire (Ahuti Prasad), Sravya (Kaveri Jha), who settled in the US. She likes Indian tradition and reaches India with a decision to marry an Indian boy and settle in India. Sravya (Kaveri Jha) joins the club as member to learn golf and she becomes a good friend of Sanjay, They fall in love with each other. After a few days, Sravya invites Sanjay to Bangkok to impress her parents. Meanwhile, there is a mafia gang and the gang leader tells Mike Tyson (Brahmanandam) to transport a bag to Bangkok. There is a mix up and the bag goes to Sanjay. Sravya’s mother Bhuvana (Tulasi) accidentally peeps into the bag and gets horrified. Nobody knows what had happened as she could not explain anything out of shock. Later, Sanjay too finds seven severed heads in the bag. Now the game starts as to how to conceal or dispose off the bag. From now, the drama begins with a comedy of errors. How Sanjay could get rid of the bag? Did Tyson keep mum after the loss of bag? How Tyson was able to catch Sanjay? Did Sravya and Sanjay got married or not? Answers to all these questions form part of the climax.

PERFORMANCE:

Sivaji gave his best as the hero. Basically he is a good artiste and he proved it with his film ‘Missamma’. He maintained good comedy timing all through the film. A story of this sort needs a hero like Sivaji only, who had no big image and at the same time not a novice or an artiste with a low profile. The basic attraction of the film is the heroine Kaveri Jha, who had no inhibition to appear romantic and she exposed to the maximum extent. Especially the director tried to make the best use of her glamour to woo the youth and the mass audiences. The scenes involving Brahmanandam were absolutely boring and are not expected from a seasoned artiste like him. Other artistes like Ahuti Prasad, Tulasi, Babloo and Ramaprabha are in their usual best in their respective roles. Tulasi, after a long time, appeared on the big screen as a character artiste.

TECHNICAL:

The first 20-25 minutes of story runs very smoothly. Till the love episode, the director was able to manage the story well. Once the action drama started, the director miserably fumbled. Camera by Maro is just average in songs, but he was able to capture the beauty of Bangkok in a couple of scenes. The director’s immaturity is quite visible in every frame and the screenplay was very loose with many loose ends. He could not maintain the tempo in movement he lost grip on the subject in many scenes. Mantra Anand, scored tunes for the film and the songs in this film too appeared quite zigzag and were on the lines of the title song of ‘Mantra’. But, none of the songs are catchy and worth humming. However, the choreography of a couple of songs is good and the oomph in the heroine were perfectly highlighted in the movements.

ANALYSIS:

The film neither a complete comedy entertainer nor a suspense movie nor an action film. As a whole , the film is more boring and less entertaining. Though Sivaji is considered a producers’ hero with minimum guarantee, his judgment is going wrong in selection of stories. Despite having the capability to perform, he is not being utilised properly by the directors. With the boring narration and improper and poor screenplay by the director made the lady luck to evade Sivaji once again.

Cast: Sivaji, Kaveri Jha, Brahmanandam, Ahuti Prasad, Tulasi, Aiswarya, Vijayasai, Kamal, Babloo, Gundu Hanumanta Rao, Ramaprabha, Allari Subhashini and others

Credits: Dialogues – Vemagiri, Music – Mantra Anand, Camera – Maro, Art – Nagu, Editing – Upendra, Presents – Datti Nirmala Sivaramakrishna, Producers – Kumar Brothers (D Ratnakumar, Karunakar and Suresh), Story, screenplay and direction – M Nagendra Kumar

Banner: KBC Cinema

Released on: March 6, 2009