Truly, Balayya is THE’ one and only’. No one born is even worthy of
imitating his capers and histrionics. I’m not writing this to criticise
Mr. Balayya, but it takes an effort to be positive about the
performance. In a nutshell, if you’ve seen( and enjoyed, like I did)
Palnati Brahmanaidu, Vijendra Varma, Maharadhi, etc. this wouldn’t be
as frightening, or mind-blocking. I was rather disappointed, having
expected a lot out of this, because nobody I knew had dared to watch
the movie, or atleast sat through the whole of it. Balayya- starrers
give the audience a break from law, logic, reason, and at times, even
sanity, and that is the pure reason i’m so much in love with them. Now,
about the movie. To write a review, any movie would require a basic
storyline. Since it’s missing here, I will somehow feebly attempt to
write one( i’ll take it as a challenge). Balayya is introduced as a
highly respected individual in some remote village, who stays with his
grandmother, Baby(Simran). He rushes to the scene when something goes
against the law or the likes of it. Parallelly, and old man keeps
popping in and slashing the screen with his Chinese sword, and
according to himself, appears wherever there is a threat to peoples’
lives(out of nowhere). The police manage to videotape him, and since
his gymnastics cannot be performed by someone so old, they think it’s
the young Balakrishna using make-up. So a series of events follows,
where both appear at the same place but its actually the grandfather(
that’s suspense, you’re not supposed to realise till about half the
movie) who causes all the action to take place, and the police mistake
the younger one to be responsible( a lot of scenes were deleted by the
time I got to watch it so i’ll have to again) and set off to arrest
him. They realise they’re wrong anyway, but on his track, they go to
meet the younger one, and in the process learn that he was a great
freedom fighter( Raghupati Raghava Rajaram, nicknamed’Okka Magadu’ by
Simran) and that they actually got him wrong. Oh, and there’s a tiff
with the chief minister because the younger Balayya gets his son
married to his girl-friend. He’s actually corrupt, so the older one
targets him. That took some effort to digest didn’t it? Thats only a
part of it. To see what happens next, watch the movie. About
cinematography, direction, script, I have no comment( there is
actually nothing to comment about) so i’ll just skip the part. Songs
too, as expected of Balakrishna’s movies, but not as expected of Mani
Sarma. My favourite concepts deserve a mention:
- The policeman’s finger gets cut off on the Chinese knife.
5.
Balayya escapes death and comes out of a trunk thrown into the sea
using some Chinese trick to go back to Simran just cos he promised to.
His name( the triple R, and nickname)
The’OM’ tshirts, and him leaving an’om’ symbol as his sign- actually for o-okka, m-magadu.
How current passes through him and electrocutes the other two he’s holding, but he’s fine(and ninety years old)
The climax scene which i’m sure you must have heard of, but i’m not revealing cos I follow the ethics of review-writing.
A word about the heroines - they could give any prostitute(no offence please) a run for her money any day.
Movies
like this aren’t made very often, so they shouldn’t be missed when they
do release. A highly mutilated and ironical version of Shankar’s hit
flick, Bharateeyudu, but a very feeble attempt at movie making. It’s
not as bad as the others, but, I repeat it should be watched atleast
once. Popular opinion is that it’s a movie you gotta make your enemy
see, its the best way to take revenge; but I say its a welcome break
from rationality, and all of us do deserve it. Movies like these make
you appreciate a proper movie when it comes, wholeheartedly.