Tag Archives: Sampath Raj

Panjaa

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Panjaa’s opening titles are in bold graphic novel style with a 3D effect. Eye catching and intriguing, the confident visuals match a slick modern underworld thriller where characters are not always what they seem and life is lived in shades of grey.

There is nothing really new in the conflict at the heart of the plot, but Vishnuvardhan has tweaked things just a little and saves the film from being too familiar. I saw this in the cinema, without subtitles, when it released. While the basic plot and motivations were clear, I enjoyed seeing it again on a subtitled DVD as some of the characters’ thought processes were more accessible.

Most of the film looks to have been shot on location and it adds a note of authenticity in terms of the buildings, the lighting and the sense of place. I particularly liked the ornate architecture of Kolkata, as well as the lush green of the countryside. The colour palette is subdued and the style is pared back and modern. There is nary a plaid shirt in sight!

Jai (Pawan Kalyan) is the enforcer for Bhagawan (Jackie Shroff). He is a shadowy figure, always a step ahead and coolly efficient in his execution. Jai has a strong moral sense and acts according to his own notion of right and honour. He serves Bhagawan because when his mother and sister were assaulted, Bhagawan gave him justice and a refuge. But when Bhagawan’s son Munna returns from overseas, it is clear that Munna is not the kind of man Jai could tolerate, let alone support. Things escalate as Munna takes full advantage of being his father’s son.  Jai struggles between loyalty and his own code, and the need for more in his life.

Jai also struggles with the ladies. The one he wants makes him shy and tongue tied. The one that wants him is very assertive but he isn’t interested. I’m not convinced Janvi (Anjali Lavania) was necessary to the story, but it was nice to see the bad girl get to talk and think for herself. Unfortunately she ran into the brutal Munna on a bad day so it was shortlived. I like a good skanky item and this is certainly skanky.

Pawan Kalyan is a hero but Jai is almost an anti-hero. He is moral by his own lights but he is a professional killer. He is nice enough but not a good guy as such. He isn’t a dashing romantic hero although women fancy him and he doesn’t really win anything other than his own life. The final scene is ambiguous enough that it could be a vision of the future or a memory of the past so it’s not a resoundingly happy ending. Pawan Kalyan is very good as Jai. He draws the eye in all his scenes, using stillness and silence more than histrionics. His acting range easily spans Jai’s story from laid back comedy to high tension drama.

The casting is excellent. Having said that, I really do not understand the recent fad for Jackie Shroff in South Indian films. He doesn’t bring anything unique to the kind of roles he is playing, but he is adequate as Bhagawan. Munna (Adivi Sesh) is Bhagawan’s son, an overly entitled sadistic nutter. His performance is over the top but Munna needed to be hateful and I was certainly sick of the sight of him! Atul Kulkarni is excellent as rival crook Kulkarni. He conveys an intensity and intelligence that made Kulkarni seem plausible as a successful ‘businessman’. The relationship between Bhagawan, Kulkarni and Jai is revealed over time and the reactions and decisions of the main characters are consistent with what we know about them. The second tier of gangsters is represented by Tanikella Bharani as the slippery Guruvaiah and Sampath Raj as Kulkarni’s right hand, Sampath along with Amit Kumar and others in support. The interactions are well written and fairly restrained so it is possible to believe these guys can function in the real world. There are glimpses of family and other concerns that build a picture of this slice of the underworld.

Sarah-Jane Dias is Sandhya, a tree hugging good girl who turns up to work in Jai’s nursery. Yes. Jai is a complex man and has diversified his investments into a plant nursery he runs with Chotu (Ali). Jai is drawn to Sandhya and she likes him. Their relationship starts with superficial attraction and develops through time and proximity. She has a bit more going on in her life than just waiting for Jai, but she is primarily the love interest. I liked their scenes more on the second viewing as the dialogues helped show her character as smarter than her prancing around in gumboots lead me to think (although I appreciated the work appropriate clothing). Just as things looked promising, Sandhya returns home suddenly to see her sick grandmother.

The timing coincides with Jai’s need to get out of town. The rural setting puts him back in touch with his childhood self. He is looking for love and a home, the things he lost when his family was torn apart. But his past is a threat to himself and anyone close to him so he needs to resolve that while still keeping the promises he made.

The country sojourn introduces more of the excellent support cast including Subbaraju as Sandhya’s brother Ashok and Brahmanandam in amusing form as an inept local cop. I loved that this song is essentially a tirade against the greedy and cowardly policeman Paparayudu, accompanied by uninhibited dancing and some jiggly-bellied tiger men.

Ashok is a protective brother, henpecked yet determined to remain a bachelor, and no match for the smooth townie Jai or for local rowdies. He is frantic when Sandya comes home unannounced as he knows troubles from the past will be stirred up again and he wants to keep her safe.

Subbaraju gets to show off a bit more of his acting range than normal, and when he isn’t beating up baddies he has some fun scenes with the women of the household. Ashok and the rest of the family are vivid characters and very much part of Sandhya’s life.  Back in town, Chotu (Ali) was in trouble and believe it or not, I was sad to see his predicament. Despite these being small roles, the details are nicely drawn and the actors all deliver good performances. That kind of attention and care makes Panjaa quite satisfying viewing.

The comedy is not too intrusive. Pawan Kalyan doesn’t mind playing for laughs and I really enjoyed the Mega Tribute as Jai was persuaded to pose with cut-outs for a photo. Brahmi and Ali are in character roles and their shtick is part of the story so it stays on track. The fight scenes orchestrated by Shyam Kaushal are brutal but not too bloody, and highlight Pawan Kalyan’s strengths. The editing and composition of the action sequences is top notch. Everything flows quite well and there is a consistent look and feel to the whole film.

There are some flaws. The romance between Jai and Sandhya is a bit laboured and she does far too much marvelling at blades of grass and cooing at flowers. The first half takes a while to go anywhere. ‘Paparayadu’ excepted, Pawan Kalyan looked a bit lacklustre in the dancing but the choreography wasn’t that exciting either. The soundtrack by Yuvan Shankar Raja is average and the song picturisations are quite predictable but don’t detract from the film. Overall, the positives greatly outweigh these niggles.

Panjaa is a well made thriller with good performances and a cohesive story. It’s not dazzling or wildly original, but I never found it dull. It’s a quality effort and well worth a watch, especially if you’re a fan of the genre. 3 ½ stars!

Dhammu

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I’d been warned to pick up my ticket early for Dhammu and although I wasn’t expecting a big crowd given the response to NTR Jr’s last few ventures, I did dutifully turn up before the suggested start time. And the guys on the door were right. By the time the film was ready to roll, the cinema was totally packed, which meant a very loud and enthusiastic response to Tarak’s explosive entrance on screen. Despite a few issues with the sound and difficulties getting the second reel of the movie to play, the audience maintained their enthusiasm which helped turn a run-of-the-mill mass masala film into an entertaining Friday night ‘adventure without subtitles’.

Dhammu starts with a flashback, setting up the story and explaining the rivalry between two families in a rural village. Within the first few moments there is a decapitation followed by various scenes of death and dismemberment so it’s fairly obvious that this isn’t going to be a fluffy romance despite the promise of two heroines on the poster. The two families seem determined to use the Kilkenny cat principle of conquest and it’s not long before the remnants of Suman’s family are reduced to living under the yoke of Nasser’s sadistic thugs. Once the scene is set, the film jumps to the present day and Tarak enters via a suitably ridiculous leap from a window onto a black 4WD. This is the first of many such black 4WD’s that gave their lives during the making of this film, so be prepared for crashes, inexplicable explosions and general vehicular destruction often for no apparent reason other than the director seemed to feel that it was time for another car (or 3) to meet an untimely end.

Tarak plays Ramachandra, an orphan who is against violence although that’s not entirely obvious since he’s beating up bad guys single-handedly from his first appearance on screen. OK, so he does fight with his hands behind his back and shows a reluctance to actually kill anyone, but at first I took that to be a novel trick fighting technique just because it looks good.

Ramachandra meets and instantly falls in love with Satya (Trisha) and after some initial very mild reluctance she seems to reciprocate. But it looks as if the romance, brief as it is, seems doomed to failure since Satya’s father (Subhalekha Sudhakar) wants her to marry a rich guy. Trisha looks lovely in some beautiful traditional outfits, but apart from looking pretty and the odd dance routine she has very little to do. The appearance of Karthika as the second heroine seems totally redundant as she gets even less screen time than Trisha and the attempt to create some rivalry falls flat.  Karthika also has so much collagen pumped into her lips that it looks as if they might burst at any moment while she’s speaking and this is incredibly distracting, particularly since I think she looked much better and prettier in Ko.

Both Trisha and Karthika look very stiff in the Neelo Undi Dhammu song and their awkwardness seems to increase in direct proportion to the shortness of their skirts. They both do much better in the songs where they are wearing more traditional outfits and the choreography seems to suit them better too. Tarak is on excellent form in all of the dance routines and although the songs by M.M. Keeravani aren’t particularly memorable the choreography is less fixed on trick moves and more on coordinated steps which look very slick. The only exception is the song Ruler which has little dancing and lots of CGI which looks rather out of place compared to the rest of the film.

By some means Ramachandra’s friend (Ali) learns of a rich family looking for a son to adopt and Ramachandra promptly applies to become a member of the Vasireddy family, adopting the name Vijayadwaja Sri Simha. However it’s not long before he discovers the drawbacks, namely being expected to resolve the feud between the two warring families once and for all as well as dealing with his entire extended family.

The fight scenes are the best part of Dhammu which is fortunate because there are quite a few. Tarak is often shown in slow-motion leaping and pouncing like his adopted family mascot of a lion and it works well. Mostly the fight sequences are totally over the top and unrealistic but they are expertly choreographed by Ram-Lakshman and look fantastic. People ricochet off cars, buildings and other people if they don’t happen to hit anything else in the way, or bounce off the ground in totally gravity defying ways which most of the audience seemed to find as entertaining as I did. There are lots of declarative speeches in between the various bouts of mayhem which generally went down well too, although there were a few scenes where they slow the pace considerably and it takes a while to pick up again.

The supporting cast are all well known actors and generally do justice to their roles. Kota Srinivasa Rao is familiar as the aging patriarch, while Tanikella Bharani, Suman and Sampath Raj all appear in small roles. Nasser is good as the slightly psychotic head of the opposing family and he also sports a wild and strange moustache which looks incredibly impractical. Ali is fairly inoffensive as Vijay’s friend and he got plenty of laughs from the audience, although his comedy did seem rather muted. Brahmi pops up for a few scenes but I couldn’t work out exactly what his role was in the Vasireddy family and he had very little impact. Venu Thottempudi also makes an appearance as a member of the Vasireddy family and was good in a brief but important appearance.

Overall Dhammu has nothing new to offer and relies heavily on NTR Jr to make the most of an overused storyline with standard masala ingredients. There are plenty of good moments and NTR Jr puts in an impressive performance but there isn’t anything to make this film stand out from other similar action movies in his filmography. It’s not brilliant but it works well enough as a mass entertainer, especially with an appreciative audience and I’d recommend watching at least once for Tarak, his dancing and some excellent fight scenes!

Saroja

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Saroja is a fairly standard thriller with a decent dose of dramatic tension thanks to some very good performances and loads of visual flair. I ordered the Tamil DVD but was sent the Telugu dub, which apart from the obvious difference also cast Srihari instead of Jayaram in a pivotal role. I quite like Srihari as an actor, and as I speak neither language subtitles are subtitles, so I was happy enough. I’ll be referring to characters by their names in the Telugu version.

Prakash Raj is Viswanatham, a successful Hyderabadi businessman. He is a self centred man, in an uneasy marriage and not giving his teenage daughter Saroja as much attention as he gives his breakfast.

That is until Saroja (Vega), is kidnapped. It’s one of my favourite Prakash Raj performances as he conveys fear, despair and regrets with only a scant amount of dialogue. His reactions and expressions are just perfect. There is a scene where he and his wife are watching home movies of Saroja. They can’t look at each other as they have an intimate conversation that is realistically awkward and painful.

The depth of characterisation established so simply helped me care about what happened to Saroja since it meant so much to her father.

Saroja gets an intro song about girl power and the evils of alcohol, which she delivers after sneaking out of her window to get to the gig. She is largely absent until late in the film as the drama is centred on the police operation to find her, but her character is established as resourceful and independent.

Srihari is Viswa’s friend Ravi, a charismatic policeman who takes on this very personal case. Srihari running isn’t exactly a greyhound so the chase scenes had me worried, but he is an authority figure and pillar of strength. Ravi orchestrates the police activity to recover Saroja and is on hand to witness the devastating effect the kidnapping has on his friend. There is a bit more complexity to his role than just a standard crusading cop though and Srihari and Prakash Raj share some excellent eye to eye moments. I don’t really buy his excuse for something he does, but it wasn’t a big deal overall.

There is a second storyline that will collide with the straightforward police procedural. It centres on a group of friends, totally unrelated to Viswanatham and his concerns.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EofwFRcb-8Q

Vaibhav is Rama Swamy.  The girl he loves (Kajal Aggarwal in a brief appearance) gets engaged to his friend Ajay. He is trying to make the best of his lot and comes across as a moody but not unpleasant guy. Ajay (Shiva) is a soap actor who thinks he is a little more special than he is, and tries to get by on what he considers to be charm. He gets some of the better intentionally funny lines as he cites his TV serial commitments as a reason for avoiding anything he doesn’t want to do. Rama’s older brother Renga Swamy (SP Charan) is the average guy – happy, married with a daughter, middle class, comfortably podgy. Premji Amaren (brother of the director) is the comic relief, Ganesh, and almost every time he opened his mouth I wanted to kill him. To be fair, his straight dramatic scenes were good and a few of the jokes were funny.  Every time he saw a pretty girl, badly dressed angels would cavort around her, and the angels got grumpier as they had to keep reappearing for different girls.

But the comedy track mostly involved Ganesh acting stupid and grimacing wildly. If you find a man screaming his lungs out at the sight of a rat, or telling everyone loudly why he has to be quiet, funny maybe you’ll like him more than I do.

The boys set out on a roadtrip from Chennai to Hyderabad to go to a one day match. After driving for a few hours, including about 257 snack and pee breaks as well as a run in with Brahmi, they are delayed by a major road accident and decide to take an alternate route.

The storylines intersect when the guys take a wrong turn in the dark and end up in a spooky factory complex occupied by the imposing Sampath (Sampath Raj) and his gang, who have Saroja captive. The adrenalin rises from this point until the film’s conclusion as the boys try and extricate themselves from their perilous situation and accidentally seem to be rescuing the girl. There is always time for a dance break though! Kalyani (Nikitha) and Sampath entertain the troops and I have to say seeing all the bad guys in a dance number was a lot of fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qGWCfwDv9c

The ‘heroes’ and the baddies are ordinary guys and the fights and chases are consistent with that. There are no amazing flying leaps and stunts, but there is a strong feeling of the fear and effort in those scenes which is amplified by the lighting and composition of the shots and Saravanan’s cinematography is impressive. Even when things got less believable, the characters remained true to themselves and didn’t develop superpowers. There is some question in my mind as to how well these guys could navigate an unfamiliar place in the dead of night, but whatever. I thought Vega was convincing and in most scenes looked like a school girl. There were signs of a romantic attraction between her and Ram that I thought was a bit not right in view of their character ages. It’s just a fleeting thing but was it necessary for it to be there at all?

The Yuvan Shankar Raja (Venkat Prabhu’s cousin – what a family) soundtrack is good and the range of musical styles supports the full span of the drama. While the songs are well placed in the story, I’m not sure all the picturisations were necessary. The montages sometimes caused a break from the overall mood as they were even more stylised than the rest of the film. The direction relies on gimmicks but that visual interest and excitement helped to give a standard plot a bit of freshness. The story doesn’t completely rely on the visuals so I didn’t feel it was too glossy for its own good. The performances, especially Prakash Raj’s, are compelling on their own.

It’s a film where the outcomes probably won’t surprise anyone, but the way those things happen might. If you want a modern looking comedy/drama/thriller that’s not too heavy on gore and showcases some good character actors, give this a go.  4 stars!

Heather says: Saroja has all the right ingredients to make a good film with an interesting story, excellent cast lineup and snappy dialogue. But it suffers a little from a very long set up with perhaps too much detail in some scenes and not enough in others. There are also a few scenes where the action takes place in poorly lit sets and I found it very hard to tell what was going on. However, once past the slow beginning, it’s a very enjoyable watch as it blends comedy with action and drama in a way that is rare in Tamil cinema. I do like the way the action is preceded with a date and time stamp in the opening sequences as it gives the feel of an American cop show and plants the idea that time is important. Although perhaps this isn’t followed up quite as well in later scenes. The introductions to the various characters are generally good, but I would have preferred director Venkat Prabhu to spend a little more time with Saroja’s family. It is clear that Viswanathan is caught up in his work and doesn’t have time for his daughter, but I think a little more information about the family dynamic would have made their characters more sympathetic. It took more time to get a feel for Saroja and her father as a result, although this may very well have been intentional, as we learn about the family as the film goes on, just as the four friends do.

The interaction between the friends is well done, and feels very realistic. Perhaps it’s not quite as realistic though that they remain undiscovered sneaking around the bad guys’ lair with all of their arguing and long conversations. But the comedy in these was good and the story was well played out in these scenes. The action sequences, at least those that are visible, are also well choreographed and there are some really good ideas in the execution of the various fight sequences.

I liked the twist at the end which I did not see coming at all, although I thought the justification by the villain was rather weak. In it for the money alone might have worked better, but it was still a good ending. I also enjoyed the comedy with Ganesh seeing angels appearing around pretty girls. All of the four characters worked well for me as they each had some endearing character traits and some really off-putting ones – just like in real life. They seemed like much more normal guys than typical filmi heroes which makes the film more interesting to watch.

This is the first of Venkat Prabhu’s films I’ve seen and it’s inspired me to find his others. I’d say skip over a lot of the set-up and then sit back to enjoy a really good action comedy. 3 ½  stars.