Story : Varadharajulu (Kota Srinivasa Rao), chairman of a bank in Vizag joins hands with Bittu (Sonu Sood) and his brother Lala (Shafi) to grab the customers deposit money of over 1500 crores. On the planned night, Ravindra Narain (Allu Arjun),a street smart guy, who believes in making quick money gets a lift in Bittu’s car on his way to a bar for IPL betting. Ravi who gets to know his plans teams up with Police Commissioner Raja Manikyam (Rao Ramesh) and helps the cops in catching Bittu and killing Lala. Bittu escapes the next day with revenge on Ravi and the latter moves to Hyderabad getting into witness protection program. While living with ACP Sitaram (Rajendra Prasad) family, he falls for Madhu(Ileana). What happens next forms the rest is to be watched on big-screens.
Performances : Allu Arjun is high on energy and his costumes are cool and dances are as usually best. He has a strong screen presence and pleases his fans with his comic timing. Allu Arjun’s punch dialogues with Rajendra Prasad and other characters will bring the audiences repeatedly to the theaters.Ileana is slim and beautiful. She provided ample glamour in the songs. And the romantic track in the first half with Allu Arjun is good. Rajendra Prasad is another asset for the film. He once again proves that he is the king of comedy with his expressions and performance. Hope he does such roles in future. Brahmanandam entertains to the core, MS Narayana is hilarious. Rao Ramesh and Tanikella Bharani bagged good roles; Brahmaji and Sonu Sood are perfect. Others were adequate.
Technical Analysis : Devi Sri Prasad’s music have already topped the chartbusters and the chorography is good. Title song Julayi, Mee intiki mundho gate, and O Madhu are good on-screen. Allu Arjun as usual rocked the dances. Trivikram Srinivas dialogues added strength to the film. He packed with punch dialogues all the way. Dialogues such as “Logic Lu evaru nammaru andariki magic le kavali, anduke mana desam lo scientists kanna baba la ne ekkuva nammutaru.., “Jevitham Highway Gelupu One Way', “vadiki gonthu undi arusthadu..veediki family undi jadusthadu”, “ Mamulga mudurlu plan chesi pani chestharu, nalanti Deshamudurlu pani chesthu plan chestharu “ will please the audiences. Direction is good and screenplay is fresh and moves at good pace though few scenes remind you of Hollywood scenes. Editing is crisp in the first half and could be better in second half. Production values are good.
Analysis : Trivikram Srinivas brings in freshness to the film with his rib-tickling dialogues while the actors entertain us with their experienced good comic timing. However, scenes like bank robbery were direct lift from The Dark Knight with very minor changes and the climax episode is similar to The Italian Job. Nevertheless, climax scenes impress you with a mix of action and emotional scenes. Dialogues are the main asset of the film apart from Allu Arjun, Rajendra Prasad and other characters performances. The first half of the Julayi is filled with humor elements with entertaining dialogues while the second half is a bit dull and weak comparatively to the other half. The pace drops in the second half here and there. Nevertheless, Julayi, all in all is a fun-filled entertainer.
Final Verdict : Allu Arjun’s energy and Trivikram’s dialogues make Julayi a fun-filled entertainer…
Panjaa Movie Review
Story : Bhagawan (Jackie Shroff) is a dreaded don who is protected by Jaidev (Pawan Kalyan), a follower and in fact power of Bhagawan. There is a rival gang for Bhagawan Kulakarni (Atul Kulakarni). Jaidev has a fiend Jhanvi (Anjali Lavania) a club dancer and Bhagwan’s psycho son Munna (Adivi Sesh) shows his insane attitude on her. Jai also runs a nursery garden and his life takes a turn when Sandhya (Sarah Jane Dias) enters his life. He falls in love with her. Meanwhile Munna kills Jahnvi as she rejects him and in turn Jai kills him and becomes the target of Bhagawan. The rest of the story is to be watched on the big-screens.
7th Sense Review
It is
Another film from the house of film makers who lack the more basic of senses.
Plot
A deep baritone voice over starts off telling us about the origin of the founder of Shaolin temple, a South Indian (Suriya playing Bodhidharma). And a long enough period episode which hits the benchmark mediocrity in most departments, just like the rest of our population who carry the film maker tag with a bit too much pride. A bit too much to keep them away from basic detailing and crowd control.
Bodhidharma leaves to China for some unscripted reasons, ends up at a small village (whose population keeps fluctuating depending on the number of extras they could gather on a given day), cures a badly picturised local epidemic just by grinding a few green leaves and also saves the village from the attack of badly portrayed bandits in a badly choreographed fight.
Centuries later...
Aravind (the hair gelled Suriya) works in a circus and falls for Subha (Shruthi Hasan) who's there for some sort of research (the bio-tech major is the only detail written for her).
After plenty of random scenes and songs, the protagonists save the country from the bio-war China launches (the Chinese of our films: Stern looking spiritual freaks, so spiritual that they can control you by staring hard).
What's good?
Like many a big budget films, the expensive cinematographer we manage to hire is the only one that provides a bit of relief whenever he's allowed to.
What do we pay for?
We are at a point where it seems like all we pay for are the untimely songs that are shot abroad, fair skinned strip tease and agonisingly long action sequences. Whatever happened to the 'start point' called screenplay.
Actors
Suriya had always managed to seem less idiotic than most of the films he's been in, he does it again.
Shruthi Hasan's no less than most of the male star kids that deny the fact that they should act too.
Verdict
Think of a scenario where you are called for a free screening and pay whatever you feel like at the end of the show. This film in that context wouldn't let me pay more than 10 rupees (and that's for the air conditioning).
RA.One Review!
Can anything be beyond the ken of a movie megastar and his much-awaited super-ambitious sci-fi action flick? So life, real and imagined, comes neatly gift-wrapped this Diwali with all the sparkles and frills of dazzling computer-generated graphics, crowd-pleasing stunts and good ‘ol Bollywood set pieces in RA.One. . .
Huge box office fireworks are but inevitable when SRK is at the turnstiles on a festive weekend. But does RA.One offer anything more than the joy of instant thrills and the on-screen exploits of a supernova eager as hell to pull out all the stops?
The film goes where Krrish and Robot went before and doesn’t stop there. It strives desperately hard to venture beyond.
The breakneck ride certainly has its moments of fun. But, on the whole, RA.One is far too derivative to take anybody except the most gullible of moviegoers – fortunately for Mumbai’s sappy yarn-spinners, that breed of ticket buyers is alive and multiplying – by genuine surprise.
You do not mind going along for the spin because it is one of the nation’s most-loved megastars who is serving up this easy-to-digest concoction with a great deal of intent. Shah Rukh Khan may be visibly ageing, but there can be no denying that he can still turn on the magic.
But, sorry, this isn’t ‘the next level’ of Hindi cinema, let alone superhero flicks. At least, let us all hope it isn’t. Comic-strip terminators do have their uses. However, when the idea is to whip up a bubbling brew that, in the time-honoured tradition of a Mumbai mass entertainer, seeks to embrace a bit of everything, the wannabe desi Superman can only fall between two very, very tall stools. But not everybody will hear the thud, though.
RA.One packs in just about everything under the sun and the moon so that the paying public goes home feeling they haven’t been shortchanged. From the mythical to the Gothic, from the Biblical to the digital, from the wildly melodramatic to the mildly humorous, writer-director Anubhav Sinha summons every narrative influence that he knows of to the table to crank out a vehicle fit for the one and only SRK. It trundles along all right but never quite hits the high roads.
What would Sinha have fallen back on had Mary Shelley not conjured up her Frankenstein and his runaway monster nearly two centuries ago? Or Marvel and DC Comics hadn’t unleashed their universe of superheroes and arch-villains? Or a brigand-turned-sage hadn’t given us an epic so rich in plot and character that it can never be squeezed dry?
Not that it matters, but there is a story in RA.One. A geeky gaming expert, Shekhar Subramaniam (Shah Rukh Khan), rustles up a digital game to impress his son, Prateek (Armaan Verma).
The game begins playing games and unleashes a malevolent power, RA.One, an abbreviation for Random Access One as well as a phonetic approximation of the biggest symbol of evil in Indian mythology. It turns upon its creator and devours him.
The next chapter of the film is unalloyed Bollywood with the spirit of Hollywood blockbusters thrown in for good measure: enter a superhero, G.One (meaning jeevan, life force) who must protect Shekhar’s wife (Kareena Kapoor) and his son, besides restoring the reign of good over evil.
Shah Rukh is the invincible hero and Arjun Rampal is the unstoppable baddie. If the epic clash of the cyborgs isn’t enough to keep you glued to your seat, RA.One proffers cheap thrills in the form of Sanjay Dutt, Priyanka Chopra, Rajinikanth (appearing here as Robot’s Chitti) and, of course, the sprightly Chammak Challo number. As a vendetta saga, RA.One might be right up your alleyway. It delivers more than your money’s worth in terms of pure entertainment. It is impressively shot, technically good enough to pass muster and the hi-jinks drama has the pace to keep tedium at bay.
What you see is passable, what you hear is enjoyable, but what you take away is insubstantial.
RA.One is like a colourful Popsicle that looks tantalising, tickles the palate while it lasts, but leaves no particular after-taste. Sound and fury? Loads of it. Significance? Not much.
Two and a half stars would have been in order – the extra half is for the sheer scale of the film’s ambition.
