Hero’s bid to gain new image fails

Raja, who gave hits like ‘Anand’ and ‘Vennela’, fell flat in recent times, with successive flops like ‘Mr Medhavi, Mayabazar, Nee Sukhame Ne Korutunna and Andamaina Abaddham’. At the same time, the heroine Sanjana who made her debut with ‘Bujjigadu’ could not taste any success so far. Both are desperately looking for a success. Believing that a change in image might bring a success, for the first time, Raja chose a subject with action in its backdrop and strongly depended on a senior artiste like Rebel Star Krishnamraju. However, all his dreams shattered as his latest film ‘Samardhudu’ too could not draw crowds due to the poor movement of the film by debutant director Arjun.

JK (Krishnamraju) is an honest politician. He always believes that a politician is a public servant and should work for the uplift of poor and downtrodden without looking for self. Not only, he but also his forefathers believed the same and donate more than 200 acre land for a university. Though the 100-acre land behind the university costs more than Rs 100 crore, he did never allow to sell it despite several industrialists lure him. He is known as a saviour and god for the people of the constituency. Once JK faces attempt on his life. However, he survives the attempt, but hundreds of people suffer injuries in the attack.

A group of people (Jeeva, Saleem Panda, Bozo, Sekhar) hatch plans to kill JK and Raja (Raja) joins them, claims that he was sent by a jailer in north India. He claims himself to be a cold-blooded murderer. Two more murder attempts are made on JK by this group and miraculously JK survives but all the gang members working to kill JK die in different incidents. At this juncture, Raja goes to JK and then the suspense gets revealed that Raja is none other than the son of JK. However, in the climax everyone comes to know that Valmiki (Vinodkumar) is the brain behind all the murder attempts and he resorted to backstabbing at the instance of Chief Minister (Dandapani) and an industrialist (Vizag Prasad). In the climax, Valmiki gets killed in the hands of his own man during a scuffle with Raja.

PERFORMANCE:

Raja should realise that he could work for family subjects alone and should not waste time by experimenting with action films. His body language won’t suit for action subjects. Though he tried to make a changeover in his image, he could not reach the expectations of the audiences. Sanjana filled the glamour slot and tried to imitate Genelia in some scenes by trying to appear like a chatterbox. Moreover, she went a step ahead and resorted to a lot of skin show. Her romantic overtures give a shoddy look for a decent film. Krishnamraju played his real life role on the screen as a politician. Though he was a former MP, he played the role of an MLA in the film. His performance is the only saving grace for the movie. Though the criminal gang has many baddies like Jeeva, Saleem Panda, Bozo and Sekhar, none of the characters has any seriousness and all are proved comedy villains. Comedy by Krishna Bhagawan, Hema and Venumadhav failed to tickle the funny bone of the audiences.

TECHNICAL:

Music by Rajasekhar Valluri remained average and only a couple of songs are good to listen and foot-tapping. Re-recording is a complete flop and it failed to elevate any of the scenes in the film. Editing by Gauthamraju is also below average, as nothing would be left in the film if he seriously go for editing the film. Camera by Dutt is okay, while dialogues by Srinivas Malkari lacked the punch. Action by Ram-Lakshman is okay. Production values of Devika Productions are normal.

REMARKS:

An artiste should weigh the pros and cons of a character while selecting the subject. Just because the routine family or soft subjects are not giving any success, if an artiste tries to choose action films, that will never work out. Likewise, the heroine should also realise that mere skin show would not bring her name and fame. The director and dialogue writer should keep in mind that double meaning dialogues would show their bad taste. As a whole, the film could not attract either the class audiences or mass audiences and earned a flop talk right on the day of its release itself.

Cast: Raja, Sanjana, Krishnamraju, Vinodkumar, Dandapani, Jayaprakash Reddy, Jeeva, Saleem Panda, Krishna Bhagawan, Venumadhav, Harshavardhan, Sarika Ramachandra Rao, Benarjee, Vizag Prasad, Jayasingh, Bozo, Sekhar, Sana, Hema, Surekhavani, and others.

Credits: Camera – Dutt, Music – Rajasekhar Valluri, Editing – Gauthamraju, Dialogues – Srinivas Malkari, Presents – Narahari Vinay Reddy, Producers – Akula Suresh Patel and M Venkatarami Reddy, Story, dialogues, screenplay and direction – Arjun Reddy.

Banner: Devikaa Productions and Orange Frames