Goonda (1984)

Posted on April 28, 2016 by masalaaddict

A sophisticated archaeological dig uncovers a priceless idol. Numerous criminal gangs swoop to claim the prize, and the title of Best Gang Ever.

There are men in red shirts v men in white pants v overgrown scouts in khaki. And then a relatively svelte man in black ninjas his way onto the scene – cartwheeling and backflipping like he’d just invented acrobatics. Who could it be?!?

Chiranjeevi teams up with A Kodandarami Reddy again for a mass film with a few little tweaks on the standard formula. There are multiple identities, daring deeds, family histrionics, a significant mole, and a lot of prancing around in parks.

Kalidas (Chiranjeevi) is the up and coming star of a crime gang. Kali is confident and quite happy with his lot which seems to include Mohini (Silk Smitha), the chief’s daughter. He has a fearsome reputation, a tight perm, and blue contacts. He represents the meritocracy while the leader’s nephew Kasi prefers nepotism to ensure his career progression. He and Kali have an excellent and yet not very good at all blindfolded fight to the (almost) death which I found oddly compelling and quietly soporific.

The lair is a cave with odds and ends of lounge furniture picked up on hard rubbish collection day. And despite being top secret and underground, apparently anything that goes on is clearly audible in Kali’s lounge room. A series of unfortunate events triggered by the jealous Kasi sees Kali leave gang life to go straight.

Kali rebrands himself as Raja a pop singer with much better hair, and coincidentally meets SP Anand (Satyanarayana Kaikala) on a train. Cue flashback and the genial policeman is Raja’s father, back when he was a little boy called Ravi.

Ravi was involved in an accident resulting in a neighbour losing his sight, and his furious dad chased him down the road firing warning shots over his head. So I can kind of understand the kid being terrified of his father catching up with him. Raja saves SP Anand from goons sent to kill him, and SP Anand makes Raja stay in his home. Will they ever recognise him? Will he tell them? Will they overcome evildoers and lively happily ever after?

Raja gets a job at the nightclub owned by baddie Kasiram (Allu Ramalingaiah), where Jaya (his childhood intended played by Radha) sings. I do enjoy a bit of disco yoga classical fusion.

I am less in love with Chiru’s wardrobe, which seems to be sourced from the ladies floral blouse department.

While growing closer to Raja, Jaya reveals her intense hatred of Ravi, the child who destroyed her family. Raja decides he has to win her love as his new self, and fix everyone else’s life into the bargain. Will they ever recognise him? Will he tell them? Will they overcome evildoers and lively happily ever after?

Thankfully Raja likes to get his shirt off, so Jaya recognises the Significant Mole. After some angst and a little bit of PR from the gossipy doctor, she and Raja resolve their differences. Love arrives differently for us all. Sometimes it is wearing a Blondie t-shirt.

Raja decides to secretly protect his dad, although he still won’t tell his family who he is. But Dharmaraju has tracked down Kasi, a witness to Raja’s past. Will they ever recognise him? Will he tell them? Will they overcome evildoers and lively happily ever after?

Raja utilises his old Kalidas skills to get the money for Jaya to settle a debt, and he is the anonymous benefactor behind a sudden offer of an eye transplant to restore her dad’s vision. Raja’s fighting style is as flamboyant and flexible as ever, so the action scenes are loads of fun. There is an excellent train sequence where it is clearly Chiru himself (at least for most of the time), leaping from carriage to carriage and flinging his opponents to the winds.

As is often the case in Telugu films, justice is not clear cut and may reside outside of the legal system. SP Anand has to deal with the consequences of his temper, both in the past and now he knows his son has returned. And Raja has to pay for Kalidas’ actions. I liked that no one really escaped from themselves. It’s a good way to mesh a family drama with a revenge motif.

The multiple identities give Chiru a good excuse to switch up the wardrobe options and he imbues each character with a different emotional tone. Kali is never conflicted about being a crook, and his change of lifestyle was more to please his father figure. He certainly managed to heal his wounded heart in record time. Poor Mohini – forgotten in just one dance sequence. Raja has firm views on Jaya’s brother Srinu being a wastrel and tells him he has no right to eat if he doesn’t earn his own way. Which is interesting in light of his criminal past but maybe he saw that as honest work, and better than taking money from a WOMAN. The horror! His views on the role of women are typical of the age and genre, but he does understand why Jaya mistrusts him and that he needs to give her evidence before she would change her mind. And despite his love for his estranged family, Ravi also sees that his father was very unfair. He doesn’t examine his own decision to jump off a bridge too closely, but you can’t have dazzling insights into everything.

Jaya has a bit of backbone, and Radha always has good chemistry with Chiru. When she realised who Raja was, she was furious and articulate in rejecting him. And when she changed her views, she was again articulate and clear in what she wanted to happen with their relationship. She is a typical filmi heroine but I could respect that she was making some of her own decisions. The wardrobe team do torment her in some dance sequences, and I suspect they even repurposed Kali’s perm wig. In a way she is the character that triggers Raja into action. He could have made do with seeing his family occasionally under the guise of friendship, but he fell for Jaya and so he had to do something to gain her trust and affection.

Allu Ramalingaiah and Rao Gopal Rao are the muddling but nasty crims who run the club and there is an ongoing subplot of both stupidity and cruelty at their behest. There is also a large cast of supporting goondas, many of whom seemed most animated in their death scenes. Satyanarayana Kailkala and Annapoorna do what they have done so very many times as Ravi/Kali/Raja’s parents. Silk Smitha’s role was small but she did get to wear some fabulous sequinned shorts so she made an impression.

Despite being full mass formula, Goonda is a bit more low key and contemplative than some of Chiru’s other hits. The music and choreography is a bit lacklustre, especially considering that Chiranjeevi and Radha were no slouches in the dance department. The set design and costumes also show the spirit of making do. I think they spent all the big bucks on the train. See this for truth, justice, and two kinds of Chiru! 4 stars!

Jebu Donga (1987)

Posted on August 16, 2014 by masalaaddict

While Jebu Donga may not be the most deep and meaningful film of 1987 (or indeed any other year), it does have a slightly different approach to the Mass Hero as well as sufficient quantity and variety of dances and explosions to keep me amused.

Chiranjeevi is Chitti the pickpocket, happily fleecing the rich, helping some of the deserving poor and indulging his love of disguises. Bhanupriya is his rival in petty thieving, and has an equally strong commitment to the dress-ups and convoluted schemes. Satyanarayana Kaikala and Maruthirao Gollapudi are the not as bumbling as they seem CBI officers who need to get a spy into Raghuvaran’s gang. And Radha is a woman of mystery. The police decide to use the unwitting Chiru as a distraction, feeding the crooks a fake top secret file that names him as Special Agent Chakrapani. While he goes about his daily crimes, the crooks are after him and the cops are watching the shenanigans. But eventually things come to a proper masala conclusion, albeit one with a couple of surprises.

While Telugu mass films are all about the hero, one of the things I enjoy most about Jebu Donga is that Chiru’s character is not as much in control as he thinks he is. He reacts to the confusing succession of attacks and rescues but has no idea why some things are happening. He tries to beat Bhanupriya’s character to a heist but ends up losing his trousers – don’t panic, it is all quite family friendly. Radha appears as a woman from Chakrapani’s past and Chitti is unable to say no to her. And the police manipulate him so easily. He does have to do his bit to save everyone at the end of the film, but he is not the usual know-it-all lone hero.

Chiranjeevi makes the most of his role, adding a dash of levity to the fight scenes as well as flirting up a storm. I looked over my notes from watching the film and at one point I have just written “Jeep! Whips! Leaping!” Chitti is a good person apart from being a thief, and he helps out where he can. One of his robberies even helped a reluctant bride escape an unwanted marriage. He has what might be a sister and younger brother (Shanmukha Srinivas) as well as his mother to provide for, and pretends to them that he is a labourer doing honest work. The songs are a real highlight, and not always just for the outfits. I love Rajaloo Rajalakshmi where Chiru steals Bhanupriya’s clothes while she is bathing.

His dancing is uninhibited and cheeky (even including a bit of snake style), and once she finds something to wear she dishes it up in equal measure.

I’m not so sure about his wardrobe choices. The double denim and highpants are a symptom of the late 80s but I really do not get the sleeveless skivvy.

Bhanupriya’s character is a bit ditzy although she exhibits competence in her chosen field of cons and theft. While Chiru is relatively plainly dressed, she wears some outrageous outfits and more than holds her own in the dances. I’m not sure how she is related to Chitti but when she falls for him it feels more as though they have been meant for each other for a while but are only now admitting there is an attraction. And where many a filmi heroine has to be rescued, she does her share of saving him too. She knows she is smart and sees no reason to let the slightly dim but charming Chitti overrule her.

Radha’s character is the real secret agent. I think she tells Chitti that he is a perfect lookalike for the deceased Chakrapani and he cannot resist her helpless female act. He should have been alerted when her dream sequence song turned up looking like this! She is smart, runs her own operation although her dad is one of the CBI officers using Chiru, and she has firm views on what needs to be done. Like Bhanupriya, she will accept help but she doesn’t always wait around for it to materialise.

Jebu-Donga-Raghuvaran and Kannada Prabhakar

All good heroes need a bad villain. Raghuavaran is the sleazy Peter, the main man who runs operations for the completely insane Kannada Prabhakar. I always like a bit of megalomaniacal set design and sadly that is where Jebu Donga fails me. Peter lives in a respectably glossy mansion decorated with portraits of himself and masses of horrible modern sculptures while the bad guy HQ is a simple rustic camp. Not quite up to the Mogambo gold standard despite the impressive commitment to training shown by the minions. Most of the thugs wear that pale blue or mauve, but there are special colour coded sets as well as some plain clothes goons. Satyanarayana and Gollapudi are actually lots of fun as the police masterminds. They amble around, two portly middle aged gents who giggle like school girls as they watch the drama ebb and flow around their hapless helper. They also have some odd little flashbacks to what I think are Gollapudi’s terrible ideas for going undercover.

Chakravarthy’s soundtrack borrows from Mr India, Michael Jackson and who knows what else. It’s all great fun, largely due to the enthusiasm of Chiranjeevi and Bhanupriya. And for once, the ladies get the sequins and lycra while Chiru dresses relatively conservatively.

I always have reasonable expectations of a Chiranjeevi/A Kodandarami Reddy film. There will be heroics, fights, dances, romance, eyeball melting colour and movement and almost no traces of logic. Jebu Donga delivers and shows Chiru in a more comedic, blundering hero role. Chitti may be a bit thick but Chiru knows exactly what he is doing and how to wring maximum entertainment from his material. The movie is available on YouTube. If you’re wondering, I deliberately chose the upload with the most offensive watermarks. Dear Reader, if you know anyone at that poxy company, please gently slap some sense, or at least some shame at defacing a film, into them. Well worth seeing for the excellent cast and the frothy material. 3 ½ stars!

I will leave you with a Megabirthday Masala Multiple Choice Quiz. Please examine the following image.

Which of the following happens next?

Evil Overlord makes crippled dance-obsessed Shanmukha Srinivas dance (a bit like Basanti in Sholay)
Chiru, tied up and dangling in mid-air, escapes by breaking the trees from which he is dangling
A Ma is terrorised by being given an unwanted haircut
Radha kicks the bejesus out of about 47 bad guys
Someone is so determined to detonate a bomb that he sets himself on fire and rolls across a clearing to ignite the fuse
What do you mean which of the following? That’s a rookie question. All of the above, of course!

Kodama Simham

Posted on January 26, 2014 by masalaaddict

Chiru as a cowboy! Hidden treasure! Radha as a jungle warrior princess!

While I love a lot about Kodama Simham I am going to begin with a caveat. There are some horse stunts that turned my stomach. If that would worry you, have the fast forward button at the ready. In a couple of scenes it did look like the horse that went down got up and ran past the camera so maybe I am overestimating the likely damage. But it is something that makes me wary of this genre, no matter what industry made the film. And it seems a bit rough when it is a horse that saves the hero at a critical point.

Bharath (Chiru) is a gunslinger – the good kind – picking up the bounty on criminal types. Bharath manages to upset the local purveyors of iniquity. His parents are killed, but not before his dad tells Bharath he was adopted and to go look for his biological parents. His father Dharmadev (Satyanarayana Kaikala) hid some treasure to keep it safe, but was forced to go into hiding while Bharath’s Ma was jailed. Bharath must retrieve the treasure, clear his parent’s name, and give the bad guys their comeuppance. Simples!

I’m not sure what time period this film is meant to be set in. There are few reliable fashion indicators.

Horses are the only form of transport although there does seem to be a lit-up fish tank and a jukebox in the saloon. There are what look to be Native American styled natives, as well as a forest dwelling tribe of non-specific plumage. Plus the (possibly) cannibal cat-people guarding the hidden treasure.

There are hangings and shootings galore, and justice seems to be an individual pursuit. Well, Brahmi is the local police so I can’t blame anyone for deciding to go DYI. Bharath disrupts an auction where young ladies are being sold to men or brothels, sets the captives free with a cheery “All the best” and that seemed to be the end of that. Swapna is chased for the umpteenth time by men of bad intent and runs into the jungle, leaving her girlfriends for dead. Nice. She meets Dharmadev who tells his boys off for their lack of manners and again, that seems to be the end of that. There is a pleasing finality to some of these issues: “You’ve been told, now bugger off and don’t do it again”. “OK”. If only that worked in real life.

While the title cards said K Muralimohana Rao directed, at times I suspected the film was being ghost directed by the Hat Department. Telugu cowboy films always turn it on for the headgear, and this was a corker. Behold!

Chiru’s hero entrance starts, as it should, with his boots before the rest of him swaggers in to view.

Unfortunately it is hard to tell on a grainy VCD print, but in one scene if his boots aren’t bulletproof, they come close. He has a laconic style and an extensive collection of guns. But what makes him an unstoppable Hero is his self-belief and righteousness. There is a touch of Clint Eastwood in how Bharath is styled – he wears a poncho with panache (probably all that practice Chiru has twirling capes) but Chiranjeevi puts his own stamp on the role. Bharath is a dancer and a ladies man as well as a capable fighter and filial son. Directors must have count their lucky stars to get a hero who could dance and fling himself around in action scenes and do the horse riding scenes as well as being ladybait. The story builds up to an all-in confrontation, and Bharath does follow a fairly logical path to that conclusion, even if the steps along the way strain the elasticity of my disbelief suspenders.

Could one heroine suffice for such an exemplary hero? No.

Swapna (Sonam ) is the mayor’s daughter. She has a penchant for making bad art and wearing terrible outfits.

Bijli (Radha) could probably be described as a tribal princess. She likes hunting, shooting and wearing bad outfits. There is some common ground for these ladies if only they could see it. It took me a while to place Sonam but then it hit me. The vacant stare, the pout, the head tilted on the side – She was in Ajooba! Maybe her career is worth investigating further…. Radha of course was an established heroine in South films at this time, and Bijli is the more substantial of the female roles. She looks like she had fun playing the kickarse leader and Bijli and Bharath were the main drivers of many of the revengey plans. Sadly for Bijli, Bharath seemed to be drawn to the girl who did enough stupid things that he would be kept fully occupied in saving her.

Pran is the dastardly Mayor. He is first seen reading a proclamation off a fancy silk scroll before ordering the hanging of an assortment of extras. I was so pleased when I recognised him but somewhat disappointed that he was in such a stereotypical role with little scope for him to really work his villainy. Still, Pran! Always fun to see worlds collide even if he did try and have Chiru’s eyes out with a red hot poker.

Mohanbabu is the pungent Suddigaali – everyone sniffs when he turns up and no one looks pleased with the result. He is a cartoonish villain but his spaced out reactions and bizarre logic made for some entertaining scenes. Sudhakar is the Mayor’s bumbling accomplice and does his usual shtick. Kannada Prabhakar is a more flamboyant and sociopathic bad guy.

There is also that guy, who looks like a) Jaws from the Bond films and b) he stole one of Chiru’s costumes. There is a villain for all seasons in this film.

This is one of the films where I wait eagerly for the songs. Every picturisation has its own kind of awesomeness, largely fabric based. Raj-Koti’s songs are fun and Chiranjeevi makes the most of the choreography. I choose to believe his dancing on the ceiling was a tribute to Fred Astaire rather than Lionel Richie.

Sadly few of these songs are available on YouTube or the like due to the egregious copyright claim shenanigans. I cannot fathom why a company with no apparent interest in promoting or preserving the old films they allegedly own would object to short clips being shared online when they don’t have their own version uploaded. I’d get it if they were worried about loss of ad revenue, but often I am mystified. Unless they’re worried someone will try and buy a copy.

See this, if you can find a copy, for the full tilt tongue-in-cheek mass style transplanted to Cowboy Country and the pleasing commitment to justice and hats. Chiru is in fine fettle and Radha is an excellent foil. The more is more approach means you’ll never have long to wait for the next song, dance, fight, demonstration of how to transport a treasure chest across a gorge or costume change. 4 stars!