Tag Archives: Telugu

Trinetrudu (1988)

Posted on by

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!

 

Rx 100

Posted on by

Rx 100

There is an interesting story lurking behind all the violence and sex in Ajay Bhupathi’s directorial debut, but it’s frequently hidden behind a rambling approach and a lax attitude towards editing. The story of a young man driven to drugs and alcohol by the loss of his ‘one-true-love’ also leads to comparisons with Arjun Reddy and Devdas, but the village-based Rx 100 has none of the epic scale or attention to detail seen in these films. However, there are some good points and Ajay Bhupathi has made a real attempt to deliver something different, even if he does falter somewhat with the execution.

Rx 100 is basically a love story (although perhaps not quite as ‘incredible’ as advertised), with various diversions into standard masala-style village-based politics. Where the film takes a different route is in the development of the romance between Shiva (Kartikeya Gummakonda) and Indu (Payal Rajput), and the events that happen after the couple are separated by Indu’s father, Vishwanadham (Rao Ramesh). The first half sets up the background, introducing Shiva as a violent and unpredictable man who beats up one of Vishwanadham’s men in front of a remarkably unresponsive crowd in the local market. The police are reluctant to press charges despite Shiva’s reputation,although the inspector threatens action if Shiva’s guardian (Ramki) fails to control his excesses in future. Despite oddly being called Daddy by all the villagers, Shiva’s guardian is mostly well respected but politics and Shiva’s relationship with Indu have soured his friendship with Vishwanadham, leading to a general rivalry between the two men.

The film moves into flash-back mode to explain how Shiva ended up addicted to alcohol and cannabis, roaming around the village on an Rx 100 Yamaha bike threatening Vishwanadham’s men, destroying his property and generally interfering in his business as much as one drunk can. The flashback starts with Vishwanadham’s win in the local elections and the subsequent celebrations, which just happen to coincide with the return of Vishwanadham’s daughter Indu.

Shiva isn’t particularly impressed by Indu when she arrives back in the village after finishing her engineering degree, mostly because she is rude and disrespectful to her grandmother, but she’s also just not a particularly appealing character. Indu has a sophistication and modern taste in fashion that is completely at odds with her more traditional family, but it’s her approach to romance that really sets her apart. She sees Shiva shirtless during the celebration and instantly falls in lust, leading her to bully her way into his life and basically act like any typical Telugu filmi hero in order to gain his attention. While it’s refreshing to have the tables turned and the girl carry out the stalking, I wonder if it’s really likely that Shiva would be quite so innocent and naïve as he is portrayed here?

Indu teaches Shiva how to kiss, how to smoke and eventually how to have a full-blown love affair as she sneaks away from home and the two head out to the fields on Shiva’s trusty Rx 100. Sadly for the two lovers, their idyllic summer can’t last and just when Indu seems to be ready to speak to her father about the romance, Vishwanadham announces her marriage to an NRI from America. So far apart from the fairly explicit (for a Telugu film) sex scenes and the girl chasing the guy dynamic, the story seems to be following a well-trodden path.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DB2oK4dcaU?t=4s

However, it’s the fallout from what happens next that sets the story off on a completely unexpected trajectory, with Shiva spending the next three years pining for his lost love and attempting to seek revenge on her father after Indu leaves for the USA. When Indu finally does come home the revelations that follow alter life irrevocably for both families, ending with a shocking and mostly novel finale.

While the story picks up in the second half, sadly the execution never quite reaches the level needed to make Rx 100 compelling viewing. It’s a real mishmash of good and bad – often in the same scene. For example, when Shiva is dragged from the wedding, he is badly beaten up by Vishwanadham ‘s men and locked in a barn. While it’s refreshing to have a hero who doesn’t have the strength of a thousand men and who stays down after being realistically thrashed, the problem here is that after the first beating, the gang return and do it again. And again. While this may be a nod to the ‘real-life’ story supposedly portrayed by the film, it’s simply unnecessary at this point in the film, and simply drags out the scene for no gain in the story. The same problem occurs with the love-making scenes which seem to be more an opportunity for Kartieya to take his shirt off (again), and for Payal Rajput to show plenty of skin. It’s part of the story up to a point and then it just becomes gratuitous and voyeuristic. Also problematic is the climax which seems to absolve Shiva of responsibility for his excesses while blaming everyone else and generally Ajay Bhupathi tells the story as a flat narrative without much depth or insight into the characters behaviour.

What does work well is the relationship between Vishwanadham and Daddy, with the two veteran actors providing a solid backbone to the story. Both Ramesh Rao and Ramki fit perfectly into their roles and give the film some much needed structure and balance, while of the support cast, Lakshmam is notable in his role as Daddy’s right hand man. Payal Rajput too is excellent, and her portrayal of Indu as an opportunistic and callous personality with few redeeming features is well done. In particular her performance in the finale is fantastic and provides a good contrast to Kartikeya Gummakonda’s rather excessive scenery chewing. For the most part Kartikeya veers between a good representation of a rather naïve and gullible young man and an exaggerated idea of desperation. When he’s not overdoing the emotion, he’s good but dialling back on some of the excesses would have made for a more polished performance and overall a more entertaining film.

Other good points include a polished background score from Smaran and  enjoyable songs from Chaithan Bharadwaj along with excellent cinematography from Raam including some quirky shots that bring to mind Mysskin’s obsession with the view at floor-level. The novel approach to a love story is also a selling point, but there is too much dressing and not enough foundation to the story which reduces the impact. Rx 100 may not be an incredible love story, but it is interesting and if you can cope with the uneven delivery it does pay off in the end. If nothing else it leaves you wondering just what Ajay Bhupathi will come up with next.

 

Ee Nagaraniki Emaindi (2018)

Posted on by

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.