Tag Archives: Chiru

Kirathakudu (1986)

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If Kirathakudu didn’t have Chiru and Suhasini in the leads I am not sure I would have persisted. The first hour or so is very trying indeed. But then I would have missed out on an unexpected reworking of John Carpenter’s 1981 classic, “Escape From New York”. If I see Chiru plus subtitles, the DVD is an automatic purchase so I didn’t read anything about the film before I watched it. There is a voiceover about criminals and the government, but the concept wasn’t well translated in the subtitles. Imagine my delighted confusion when it started to seem somewhat familiar.

Chiranjeevi is Charan, a poor rich boy who just wants his father (Kongara Jaggaiah) to show him some affection. Charan spends his time winning every possible sporting and aeronautical trophy, beating people up, carousing and brooding in his room.

I enjoyed this sporting montage greatly, although it has prompted me to make a statement critical of Chiranjeevi.

His swimming style is splashy and inefficient and he would not have won a race against the under 9s in my swimming club. There – I’ve said it.

Maybe it’s not about winning the race, but about looking stylish on a lilo.

And making bad art.

He is a renaissance man, albeit one with questionable taste, a very bad temper and poor impulse control. He drinks heavily, and I think I was supposed to find this appearance a warning – but he looks so good!

Charan sees a quite unimpressive statue in a local emporium and runs afoul of Swetha (Suhasini) who has purchased the one of a kind piece. His reaction to finding out he can’t have it is extreme.

Swetha is a psychology student, and daughter of the local police chief. She is smart, self assured and is not intimidated by Charan. She is also a raging narcissist from the looks of her house – pictures of her adorn almost every wall.

It is interesting that Swetha is given career aspirations and a brain, and yet the dialogues are often very disparaging of women. Suhasini is such a graceful and intelligent actress that I was pleased to see her in a reasonably involved role. She is drawn to Charan both as an interesting psychological study and because he is Chiru – those eyes!

Charan goes off the rails due to the influence of vampy Hamsa (Silk Smitha). Only Chiru could make Charan watchable as he broods, rants and sooks over why his daddy doesn’t love him and then commits crimes as a cry for attention.  Showing that she is smarter than most people in the film, Swetha finds Charan’s hideout and dobs him in to the police. He kidnaps her in a dramatic getaway and their forced proximity accelerates the already budding love.

Having been ruined by a tramp, he feels that the love of a good woman will let him live like a decent person. Yes. Surely it would be unreasonable to expect him to take responsibility or just grow up. She then takes on the burden of reforming Charan and settles in for a lifetime of prison visits. I found their song fantasies quite amusing – Swetha was all flowers and pretty colours, while Charan was much more, um, hands on. One thing they did have in common was their terrible taste in art.

Silk Smitha is Hamsa.

Well, Silk’s arse does most of the work thanks to the constant upskirting camera, but she sneaks the rest of herself into shot occasionally. Hamsa is a Bad Girl who entraps Charan and forces him to turn smuggler (bad) and wear pleather (not so bad). Again, I had to growl a bit at Charan crawling out of her bed the morning after and treating Hamsa like dirt for giving him what he wanted.

Mothers in the film are sacred but women who have sex are evil  – so I wondered briefly about how these idiots thought babies were made. I am not exactly sure why sleeping with Hamsa would be enough to place Charan under Snake’s control, especially given his cavalier attitude to the law and society, but it seems he was besmirched and that was it. The bad girl is usually a thankless role, but Silk gets a few pithy lines and an excellent confrontational cheerleading dance.

The second half of the film took a sharp turn towards awesome. Maybe because Chiru changed into this outfit?

The police need Charan’s help to take on Snake and rescue his dad (and the Top Secret papers) as they could not get into the badlands themselves. When Charan stole a car ferry and chuffed off about 10 seconds ahead of the cops, he managed to hide the ferry within walking distance of a sari shop and judging by the number of Swetha’s outfit changes, remain undetected for days. The man is a genius and I can see why the police appealed to him.

Armed with an array of gadgets and with deadly time release microcapsules implanted in his neck, Charan sets off to save the day. He lands a glider on top of a skyscraper in the crime quadrant, on a mission to rescue his father and protect Indian national security. He had to take a glider as there was no way in by land. In a puzzling development, Swetha and Baby (the cab driver played by Nutan Prasad) decide they have to follow him, and drive in through the front gate in a taxi, sedately avoiding the bombs planted along the route. While the residents look like a left over mob from a B grade post apocalypse horror movie, Swetha is able to glide around in her pristine sari without being spotted. The scenes in this second half are more closely aligned to the original film and the mood is both darker and more absurd.

Snake (Kannada Prabhakar) is the kingpin in the sealed off criminal zone. While John Carpenter recreated Manhattan as his prison colony, Snake has to make do with a warehouse complex a few minutes from the downtown area. He has possibly the best DIY lair and henchmen I’ve seen to date, and I enjoyed deciphering the very random graffiti.

Snake is also a psycho killer on a very short fuse.

This guy is quite fascinating.

He plays his role of chief henchman with a blend of odd chicken inspired noises and statue postures, and walks with what I can only describe as a slow-mo mince. While wearing a dress (maybe toga).Who is he?

And the guy who would have been played by Bob Christo in a Hindi version of this is back! Last seen in Adavi Donga (the apple peeler Wolverine claws guy) here he is sporting a fake scar and some hideous trousers.

How does it end? Is there any doubt?

It’s a film by A Kodandarami Reddy so I expected crazy, and the second half delivers. I did have to chant the ‘it was made in 1985’ mantra a few times, but even allowing for that I was irritated by some of the dialogue relating to women and their evil powers. Grow up guys! Yandamoori Veerendranath gets a writing credit, but this is a reasonably faithful remake with the addition of loads of sentiment and a message about good family values.

Chiru and Suhasini inject a bit of class into their scenes, and the WTFery dial is set to 11. I’m totally biased due to Chiranjeevi but I’d give this a cautious 3 stars, for the curiosity value of the remake and for the dystopian second half.

Here is a snippet of Silk’s big song number – it is interspersed with the final action sequence so I won’t give away all the surprises!

Aapathbandavudu

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Aapathbandavudu is a melodrama by K Vishwanath that has a bit of action, a ‘will they won’t they’ romance, ‘medicine’ found only in films and some lovely MM Keeravani songs. The memorable performances by Chiranjeevi and Meenakshi Seshadri make their characters likeable and their predicaments seem meaningful. Even with the tear soaked dialogues, dubious plot devices and inexplicable decision making, it is very entertaining, sometimes funny, and often moving.  I admit my love of Chiru helped me get past the ‘oh no they didn’t!’ moments but there are interesting ideas and dialogues that help balance out the excesses.

Good hearted low caste Madhava (Chiranjeevi) is attached to school teacher/poet (Jandhyala, who also wrote the dialogues) and his family. Apart from cow herding, Madhava is also the preferred Lord Shiva in district theatricals. Do not try and usurp his role – or this could happen to you:

Sigh. Did I mention this is a visually pleasing film?

Camera angles reflect the sense of elevation Madhava feels when he is compared to Lord Shiva, and he glows with pride at embodying the deity. But he is a country boy at heart and when his cow Ganga goes into labour his first thought is to get her off the train and into some privacy so she won’t be stressed. It’s a dynamic role that gives Chiranjeevi ample scope to use his mass hero shtick as well as delivering a nuanced performance. Most of the laughs come from situations and dialogues as well as Chiru’s knockabout physical comedy.

But I didn’t really need Madhava hamming it up in bovine (or ursine) ‘speech’.

People exploit Madhava’s generosity to make him fix their problems, but as Hema (Meenakshi Seshadri) says, it is usually him who pays the consequences. Despite his simplicity, Madhava is not stupid. He can find a loophole in an instruction as well as any lawyer, such as promising not to lay a hand on someone and still managing to rough them up. He takes on a local bigwig and employs a fighting style possibly inspired by Hanuman as well as Shiva, complete with his own vengeful song. In turn, the politician resorts to elaborate and inefficient methods to try and get Madhava out of the picture – including an attack by an enraged bull (mostly a fibreglass prop), and a murder attempt in a rigged performance. Luckily Hema realises what is going on and takes the guise of Shakti to protect Shiva. I love his dancing from around 5 minutes onwards as Shiva’s rage is unleashed.

But seriously – what is it with the rabbits?

Madhava has always called Hema a goddess, and when they dance as Shiva and Parvati he sees her as his goddess. He is very aware of the barriers between them.

Meenakshi gives Hema a distinct character and intelligence, and her emotional development is well portrayed. She is becoming physically as well as emotionally drawn to Madhava, and is both disturbed and excited by these feelings.  Hema tells Madhava she wishes he had the sense to understand what is in people’s minds, but he doesn’t. There is yearning and dreaming on both sides.

The first section is mostly rural romance with a caste barrier and a few dishooming fights, and I really didn’t expect the twist to take the form it did. Have a happy song before things get dark.

Hema’s father dies suddenly in the middle of a ceremony to honour Madhava. Chiru is brilliant as he shows the overwhelming emotions surging through the grief stricken and furious Madhava. He crafts a clay lingam and berates Shiva for his neglect despite all the prayers and offerings.  A kindly priest points out that just as Madhava could destroy what he had made, man is god’s creation and god has a right over our lives too. That seems to comfort him, but Hema is just devastated.

While Madhava is away, Hema visits her sister Lalita (Geetha) and baby niece. She is assaulted by her lecherous brother-in-law and Lalita is killed when she tries to intervene. The police are paid off and that is that. The shock, her grief over her father and sister, fear of a repeat attack – all these things cause Hema to become unstable. She exhibits extreme aggression towards men and is committed to a psychiatric hospital as her family cannot cope. Apparently a punch-up and a food fight is all it takes to fake insanity, so Madhava is soon an inmate and watching over Hema. Most of the inmates act happy and childlike and mental illness is made to seem harmless.

Rape and mental illness should not be used as cheap entertainment fodder, and there are disturbing abuses of power by characters in the film. What I liked was that other characters found these incidents as reprehensible as I did, and tried to get some justice. The mental patients had a right to decent treatment. Hema wasn’t blamed for being attacked or having a breakdown, and her family never abandoned her. There was some empathy shown for the damaged people. Not everything was swept under the carpet, but the powerlessness of the average person in the story was so frustrating.

Meenakshi plays traumatised Hema as intensely angry and determined to fight any perceived threat, which includes all men. When the drugs kick in she becomes empty eyed and withdrawn. She can’t recognise Madhava as her friend but she does eventually recognise she can trust him. When a staff member tries to rape Hema, Madhava defends her and is given shock treatment as the doctors think he is psychotic.  He is further accused of being the rapist, and his suffering is palpable as is his desperation to help her.

Chiranjeevi adds an extra layer of pretence as he switches from Madhava to Madhava (over)acting crazy, and there is a marked deterioration in his appearance once he is an inpatient.  On that note, while the idea of Chiru dressing up and having himself delivered to me in a box has some appeal, this costume may have caused the more fragile patient to have a bit of a setback. But the dancing is great!

Madhava manages to spend some time with Hema and uses a very ugly doll to reignite her memories of home and loved ones, sparked by a favourite lullaby. Compared to some of the other goings on in the asylum that struck me as quite sensible and therapeutic, and indeed she is soon released.

Madhava is left beset by fear and sadness. He has given everything he can, including selling his herd to get money to help the family, and may have ruined his own life. He berates himself for his stupidity in a powerful speech to his reflection, but can’t see any way out of this mess, or the asylum.

The ending is so filmi incredible but I still found myself on the edge of my seat. Just how could it possibly work out? And why on earth were so many people overcome with bad luck and bad judgement all at once?

There are no comedy uncles as such. Brahmanandam is Madhava’s friend and provides some physical comedy but largely this is a straight character role for him and they share a nice rapport. Allu Ramalingaiah as the uncle resents Madhava’s position in the family and has a sharp tongue when voicing his disapproval. Like Brahmi, his role is dramatic, not the comedic turn I expect from him. Sarath Babu as Sripati wants to do what is right, and is the sympathetic ‘other guy’. There is something reassuring about Sarath Babu and having him as a friend does seem to make the good guys that much more resilient. Jandhyala is very fatherly, and suits his role as the unfashionable teacher and poet who refuses to cheapen his art.

The emphasis is more on characters than causes although the film does say something about caste, dowry and other facets of society. It is wildly melodramatic, but the writer and actors invest in the central characters and there is plenty to enjoy along the way.

My DVD cover says this is a ‘must see movie before you die’. I’m not sure about that, but I encourage you to at least look at the song clips. The village scenery is pretty and beautifully filmed, the music is lovely and the dancing is excellent. But really, this is all about the performances by Chiru and Meenakshi and they won me over from the start.

3 ½ stars!

Sorry Chiru.  4 stars?

4 stars!

PS – thanks tolly for the recommendation all those months ago – where are you tolly? It’s been ages!

Rudranetra

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Rudranetra is silly masala fun that starts from the assumption that more is more. Drawing on Gunmaster G9 more than Bond, it gallops along in dazzling and hilarious style.

Chiranjeevi stars as Agent Netra who saves the world from evil, but does nothing to rid us of lycra and lurex. There are multiple villains and heroines, silly catchphrases, overcomplicated schemes, foreign locations, strange gadgets, horrific outfits and memorable design. This was another Adventure Without Subtitles but who needs words when this visual assault is coming at you?

Agent Netra (Chiru) investigates a shady businessman (Rao Gopal Rao) whose real business is in creating some kind of drug. Netra is killed in a confrontation with the next crimelord up the foodchain, Mr Kyun (Raghuvan). Agent Prathima (Vijayashanti) takes over and vows to solve the case for her lost love. She visits some associated bad guy (Nutan Prasad), and finds Yadgiri, a Netra lookalike, working in his home. She persuades Yadgiri to pretend to be Netra. Despite wearing a stealthy red and gold ensemble she is captured and taken to an underwater drug manufacturing plant guarded by men in Michael Jackson Thriller suits. I’m not sure but I think Netra was never really dead and was pretending to be Yadgiri who pretends to be Netra. It really doesn’t matter, as Chiru rescues Prathima very stylishly.

They try get to Rao Gopal Rao through his eldest daughter Rekha. Unfortunately, some pictures get swapped and Chiru acidentally sets his sights on the younger daughter – Hansalekha (Radha), who had obviously incurred the wrath of the costume designer. He decides to sweep her off her feet, and frankly who can blame her for giving in quick smart. Well, I have some doubts about a man who shoots you with a suction-capped arrow and love letter that looks like it was written by an 8 year old with her ‘My Little Pony’ crayons.

Which is the perfect style for Lekha. There is no respite from her horrible outfits until she mistakenly thinks she is pregnant (to Netra) and starts wearing sarees. Netra breaks up with Lekha and pursues Rekha but to no avail. It turned out poor Rekha was not the villain’s real daughter and he was just using her as a human guinea pig for his drug testing. He really is bad! And who but an evil man would order a child fired out of a circus cannon? (OK I admit, that idea does have some appeal, but I wouldn’t actually do it.) A daring trapeze rescue and fight by Netra ensues. What with one thing and another Netra finds his way to the top villain, Mr Kyun’s dad – Black Eagle!

Will Netra save the world? Will someone save Radha from the vengeful costume designer?

Well, you can’t have everything.

Any film with Chiru playing a triple role will get my attention. Especially when his idea of secret agent work attire is this:

Poor poor Radha. I shall let the pictures tell that story.

 

Vijayashanti gets a slightly better everyday wardrobe but doesn’t get away without a few feathers and sequins. Generally Prathima is the smarter more resourceful female, and can hold her own in a carefully choreographed fight.

The villains have truckloads of style.

Rao Gopal Rao firmly believes in world domination and colour matched lurex shoes for all his ensembles. His lair is more functional than iconic, in keeping with his pragmatic and cold blooded style. He even kills his not-really daughter Rekha once she is of no use.

Then there is Mr Kyun whose catchphrase is ‘Mr Kyun is always a question to yoooooooou’. He is a bit disappointing visually, but makes up for it with cheesy English dialogue and being pure evil.

Black Eagle is confused. Why else would he be in a dragon themed lair? Accessorising with snakes?

Perhaps this outfit is intended to make him more Eagle-y, despite the boa as boa.

His catchphrase varies from ‘Black Eagles loves you’ to ‘Black Eagle hates this’. You know you’re on a winner when the villain talks about himself in the third person. His minions look like Lego men and are about as handy in a fight.

It also makes for excellent espion-tertainment when the gadgets are abundant. Black Eagle has a ‘death bell’, which has a disco floor, and two dragons that bong the ‘bell’, which kills the prisoner (unless the prisoner is Netra). Black Eagle and Mr Kyun have built a rocket to launch their killer bees or lethal gas or drugs (there is evidence pointing to all as a possibility) but neglected to acquire the “destruction gadget lock” so that created a delay. There are fake planes, underwater lairs, exploding guns and lots of cool stuff along the way before we get to the top secret circus tent rocket control centre.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The interiors are all quite special and no wall is left unadorned. This dragon appears in several other vintage Telugu films, and turns up both in a lair and Netra’s own house. Was it the height of style? Or just recycling? There is also a pleasing commitment to chandeliers throughout, including a song in a lighting showroom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a comedy track. Brahmanandam is not it, despite being a bumbling sidekick to Rao Gopal Rao. The comedy happens in Malaysia and Singapore and involves some very unfortunate ethnic stereotypes, an annoying child and a comedy uncle in garish shirts. The only good thing about the comedy is that they get someone to take Lekha’s pulse and determine that she isn’t really pregnant. There is a fun scene where hotel staff (who look like actual hotel staff roped in for the day) chase Rao Gopal Rao through the complex shouting ‘Look Madman!’ and ‘Stop Madman stop!’

This is not Illayaraja’s finest work but the songs are pleasant enough if you watch them with your eyes closed. There is a puzzling lack of orchestral support in the climax scenes. It sounds like they forgot to write anything, the band had gone home, and in a panic they asked a bunch of blokes in the studio to vocalise heroically. This is the result  – and you’ll get to see Chiru in excellent fighting form, plus the death bell! I don’t think I was supposed to be laughing so hard I cried.

Rudranetra is a whirlwind of colour and movement. See it for the cheese, stay for the Chiru! At best, 2 stars for quality but a full 5 for entertainment and effort.

Happy New Year!

Heather says: This is such a totally fab film that it’s hard to believe it was made in 1989, at least that is until you get to the satin frocks with mutton sleeves and excessive amounts of frills and flounces. Otherwise it’s very much 70’s style Bond, although mainly without the actual style. The plot is ridiculous and I kept getting the various women confused until Temple pointed out that Radha always had the most garish outfit in any particular scene. Every time I thought the costumes couldn’t possibly get any worse, the costume department managed to go that really bit further, add in a little more bright canary yellow and dig out the worst hair ornaments I think I have ever seen. Bravo!  I do have a lot of admiration though for anyone who can carry out top-secret surveillance in shiny satin which really is quite an achievement.

It was also a real plus to see the whole of the dragon creature that appears so briefly (and only its feet) in Attaku Yamudu Ammayiki Mogudu, not to mention the number of dragons that are everywhere in Black Eagle’s lair – so why not Black Dragon then – hmm? The whole film looks so amazing that it’s hard to keep track of the story and not get distracted by the visuals. Thankfully though, even without subtitles, it all makes sense in the end, or at least as much sense as I think it was ever meant to, and the climax is really excellent. Overall a really fun watch, although probably best watched with another Chiru fan for best effect. 3 1/2 stars.