Author Archives: masalaaddict

Trinetrudu (1988)

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A 1988 remake of a Hindi “remake” of Beverly Hills Cop, A Kodandarami Reddy’s Trinetrudu is pure mass with the minimum of logic and the maximum recommended allowance of biffo and heroics. Happy Megabirthday 2018!

The story opens with a CBI officer (Nagendra Babu) finding a secret lair in an ashram. DD (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) runs the ashram, and is using it as a cover for exporting “Brown Sugar” hidden inside corpses and, I think, harvesting organs for sale on the black market. A man in a spectacular jumpsuit – my heart leapt for an instant as I wondered if it was Chiru, the outfit is THAT good/bad – kills the officer and business goes on as usual. But the CBI is not done, and despite a frosty relationship with the local police they send another man, possibly their best or maybe not; Abhimanyu (Chiranjeevi). Abhimanyu seems not very good at following police processes, and technically he kidnaps his boss, so I do question his ongoing employment as a law enforcement officer. But he’s Chiru so they let him do what he wants. Evildoers and anyone with flimsy furniture beware!

It’s interesting to see the portrayal of drug culture. Abhimanyu heads to Goa and is met by a local police officer (Satynarayana Kaikala). On the drive home, they are surrounded by scraggly white backpacker types who chatter and shake the car, like super-sized monkeys, demanding money. But the addicts in the drama are children, including Abhimanyu’s little brother who overdosed and died, and his love interest Pratyusha’s little brother. Pratyusha (Bhanupriya) is a doctor or at least someone who wears a white coat and wanders around a hospital. And the hospital proves to be a critical piece of the puzzle as Abhimanyu closes in on DD and the body count starts to rise.

DD is a modern villain with lots of gadgets to help automate his lair and people management responsibilities. He sends disappointing gang minions down the slippery dip of doom, into a cage where their certain death awaits. It’s quite impressive. That jumpsuit guy must be sore and cranky if he’s usually suspended on a bungee in the cage, waiting to do his murderous thing. And what lair would be complete without snakes, and a remote controlled electrified bird cage to contain your adversaries.

Bhanupriya is in good form as Pratyusha. She gets to show a little more than just be a love interest although ultimately she is shuffled to the sidelines so Chiru can get on with being Chiru. But Pratyusha has a profession and family and ideas about her own life. I liked that Pratyusha had no truck with Abhimanyu’s pathetic attempts to engineer a meeting with her. She was quite happy to call him out or to call the local comedy police out to get rid of him. But once they compared notes on the various overdoses and murders, she realised he wasn’t just a weirdo and started having elaborate dance fantasies. And that unleashed the creativity of the wardrobe department.

Abhimanyu has a theme song that calls him Superman and Supreme Hero. There are fights and chases and dances and more fights and gadgets and snippets of ideas from Bond films and explosions and fights galore. All the signs point to Awesome. Chiru gets to do all the hero things in this role from suave ladies man to bumbling Clouseau-esque policeman to dashing stunts, daring escapes, and martial arts-ish fights.

While there is very little of realism in this film, I liked the touch of verisimilitude as Abhimanyu on stakeout looks bored and grumpy and stress eats bananas. And of course if someone bills themselves as a local Michael Jackson, look out – you’ve invited trouble!

There are some other excellent outfits, including this hat.

Sadly for Abhimanyu, the hat completely failed as a disguise and he ended up drugged and tied to the railway tracks. Adding insult to injury, he was rescued by Tony (Brahmi, with comedy teeth). But generally Abhimanyu gets himself into and out of hot water with no assistance required. The fight scenes are high on “Karate” and low on gravity. Perfect.

Abhimanyu swears a bit, and Chiru delivers every epithet with delightfully plummy tones, enunciating each syllable lovingly and loudly. “BASTARD!” is on high rotation and he really does roar. But you know how it goes. One minute you’re prancing around swearing with vim and vigour, next you’re hurtling down the doom tube to the thunder dome to fight to the death to save your patient Ma (Annapurna).

At just under 2 ½ hours Trinetrudu is a little over long. But what to cut? I couldn’t bear to see the balloon escape go….or the bungee fight….or the hospital anaesthetic scuffle…

There’s no doubt as to how Trinetrudu is going to end, but it’s quite the ride to get there! 3 ½ stars!

 

Megabirthday 2018

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It’s mere days away! The best and most mind-boggling month of every year!

My annual struggle with choosing just one research topic continues. It should get easier with time but no….The Mega Oeuvre is too rich with options.

Previous years “efforts” include:

If you have suggestions, let me know!

And since it is ski season here, I shall leave you with this seasonally appropriate number.

 

Ee Nagaraniki Emaindi (2018)

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Tharun Bhascker Dhaassyam’s follow up to the exceptional Pelli Choopulu suffers a little from second album syndrome. Perhaps my expectations were too high, but I was left underwhelmed. Tharun Bhascker was so keen to draw us into his nostalgic world that I felt bombarded with descriptions and dialogues, but didn’t really get to know the characters for myself. I would have liked less of the how and what, more who and why.

Karthik (Sushanth Reddy) works as a club manager, hired to keep his own common people away from the VIPs. Vivek (Vishwak Naidu) is a mean drunk, a filmmaker who doesn’t make films, uncompromising and unlikeable. Uppu (Venkatesh Kakumanu) works as a wedding videographer and Kaushik (Abhinav Gomatam) is doing voiceovers for low budget TV comedy shows. All the guys have dreams, or a shared dream, that has pretty much been mothballed since 2007. In the present day, Karthik gets the nod to get engaged to his boss’s daughter. He’ll land a wife, a business, a fancy heirloom engagement ring to hand over, and a ticket to the USA, all as part of the deal. He gets the guys together for a celebratory drink and…hijinks ensue. The guys end up drunk, in Goa, minus the expensive ring, but plus a child relative Kaushik is supposed to be minding. Of course the only way to buy a replacement ring is to enter a film festival and win first prize. But that opens up old wounds and stirs old ambitions. Can the gang go back in order to move on?

I think the risk of a “slice of life” is that the viewer has to find some interest in the lives being examined. And some of the characters are not that compelling on their own merits, some are “types” rather than fully realised people in their own right. Vivek sits at one end of the scale, the intensely idealistic artist afraid to expose his work to judgement, and Karthik is his opposite, completely packing his ambitions away in favour of financial security. Uppu and Kaushik occupy the pragmatic middle, and are not the losers they seemed at first glance. They are still doing what they loved but not quite in the way they had hoped. But despite the flashbacks and memories, I felt I was experiencing it all second hand, not actually getting drawn into the story.

The film relies on a high degree of happy coincidence, and people seem to make decisions based on what the plot needs. A drunken truth or dare was framed as a bar promotion, thus introducing Shirley (Anisha Ambrose) as a promo girl who also turned up in Goa and by amazing chance happened to also be a musician who could be their composer. She also had the magical power of making people who wouldn’t have a meaningful conversation with each other agree to spill their guts on film for video content, all for a free drink. Shirley’s Russian friend Dasha just happened to have a great house with room for the guys to crash and she was prepared to act in their short film. The sapphire ring just happened to be sold by only one jeweller, based in Goa. Yes, life does often wave vaguely towards a solution after smashing you with a problem, but it felt contrived.

Sushanth is the nominal hero I guess, one who has packed up his dreams in order to be a good son. Karthik is a pleaser and usually goes out of his way to be inoffensive, which meant Sushanth is also nice but forgettable. I never felt the weight of Karthik’s decisions, or what it cost him. The resolution of his story was neither unexpected nor very interesting.

I am so over the myth of male artists being tortured souls who get a special exemption from behaving decently because of their art. Vishwaksen Naidu gives Vivek a dour intensity but I could take or leave him. Vivek blames his ex-girlfriend for his creative block, and uses aggression to cover his fear of judgement and rejection, literally diving in to a bottle to avoid facing reality. The breakup scene with his first girlfriend (Simran Chowdary) was horribly stilted and packed with clichés of the “it’s not you it’s me” line, all delivered in an expressionless staccato with Vivek grimacing and flexing. I also disliked that his redemption seemed to depend on Shirley, even if she seemed to have a reasonable handle on things.

I found myself barracking for Kaushik and Uppu, the guys who just get on with it. They know they’ll have to compromise to make a living, but they are kind of working on their craft and believe one day they’ll get their break. And they have professional standards, they’re just not obnoxious or precious about them. Venkatesh Kakumanu plays Uppu as pretty chill but with a keen sense of self-preservation and a dash of sarcasm. Abhinav Gomatam gives Kaushik a blend of empathy and shameless self-importance that made me cringe at times, and made him one of the more memorable characters. They are the underdogs in life and in the gang.

I don’t think every story has to have a 50/50 gender balance, but I was disappointed that the few women with any screen time had so little substance. The women – Anisha Ambrose, Simran Chowdhary and the actress who played Dasha – had so little to do apart from enable the men. Even the kid served little purpose other than one cheap potshot at his mother at the end. Karthik’s intended fiancée may as well have been played by a potato.

While the film is easy on the eye, my attention wandered a bit. (To be fair, that could be because of the uncle who spent the ENTIRE movie on a phone call and I think was describing a succession of surgical procedures.)  It’s a pleasant enough timepass, but I wanted more than OK. But. I do keep hoping the Telugu industry makes room for diverse stories that aren’t just mass Hero fodder, and this is certainly in that “something else” category. So please consider seeing this (or Sammohanam if it’s still around) and prove there is a market for story telling, not just spectacle.