-------------------------------------- Cyanide - the inside story --------------------------------------
Which was the last recommended a Kannada movie? Don’t seem to remember? Exactly! Now the time to watch a good (commercial) movie and never get out-of-your-seats. Cyanide is a film that shocks and undoubtedly a top class effort by A M R Ramesh. Sometime back I had seen the advertisements of this movie in papers and thought, this will be as same as some terrorist movie and ignored. When I first saw the promo on television I was shocked, the narration of the promo was excellent and the camera work was too good. I waited let the movie release and see peoples response, it is not a big director or stars movie I doesn’t want to watch it on first week. I had hered that tickets was sold in some of the C-class theatre for Rs.200/- (25/- actual), dosen’t it make more surprise we only taught it for Rajkumar or Rajanikanth movie. By this peoples show that we are great fans of technicians too.
After a week on last Saturday (2nd week) I tried the tickets in PVR & Inox, it was full and on Sunday I had been to Tribuvan Theatre with my brother where I saw somebody selling the ticket for Rs.300/- (actual 40/-), I was not able to afford that much for a weekend movie, so anyway I had come to Gandinagar so I wanted to watch some kannada movie and I had been to Santosh Theatre to watch "My Autograph" for third time, it was its 22nd week, believe it or not I got the ticket in black for Rs. 50/- (actual 20/-). After entering the auditorium I had given a seat which was in the second row, i.e. 10 feet near the screen, though it had Monee Ultra Screen Projection the screen was too big. On 3rd Week I had advance booked ticket for Sunday at PVR along with my friends, the audi was full - of course its Sunday any faltu movie at PVR will be full on Sunday.
Cyanide – There is no songs, it was just like a english movie with 115 minutes of docu-drama. Excellent and very dynamic cinematography by Rathnavelu. There are umpteen unique camera angles. Excellent, fast and tight editing by Anthony (currently doing Shivaji). We cannot say a single frame was waste and it is simplicity and gripped narration. The screenplay is also too good, which we don’t find in today’s movies. Background scoring by Sandeep Chowta and Audiography is really terrific. All the scenes have been meticulously crafted and even though almost everyone in the audience knows the story, it retains suspense. Another good thing is that no were in the movie they have used Rajiv Gandhi or LTTE or Tamil Tigers name, because its already there in peoples mind, so no place for controversy. It is a very difficult for the director to keep the balance, not glorify anything when dealing with issues that have such political overtones.
But the biggest acclaims for the director must go for this very aspect. When you come out of the theater, you empathize with both the sides equally. There is no glorification of terrorists nor the police. Though there is no comedian in the movie then too you can laugh at some dialogues. Ramesh wins a major battle by selecting the right actors, who look every inch the characters they play, it might be Tara, Raghu, Ravi Kale, Avinash or Malavika everybody surprises, apart for Prakash Rai who gives a commentary throughout, there are no stars in this film and U can’t think alternate replace for any actor.
Being a low budget movie Cyanide has everything for a complete movie. Though we have seen N number of terrorist movies like Santosh Sivan’s ‘The Terrorist’ or Mani Ratnam’s ‘Dil Se…’ or Ram Gopal Verma’s ‘Jungle’, Cyanide stands first.
Plus points: Direction, acting, cinematography, editing................
Minuse points: Released in less & dabba theatres around the city, there is no malasa/songs and the very big minuse point is that it is made in Kannada.
Story line of the movie:
The film is based on incidents that occurred in Bangalore after a group of Tamil tigers responsible for the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi stepped into the city. The incidents have been narrated as they happened.