Star Cast: Chiranjeevi, Ravi Teja, Shruti Haasan, Catherine Tresa, Prakash Raj, Bobby Simha, Rajendra Prasad, Sathya Raj, Srinivasa Reddy, Vennela Kishore, Saptagiri, Nasser, and others
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Director: Bobby Kolli
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What’s Bad: Where the story goes VS where it should’ve gone after developing the first act
Loo Break: A whole lot in the second half
Watch or Not?: Even if you’re a Chiru Garu & Ravi Teja fan, get out in the interval! Thank me later
Language: Telugu
Available On: Theatrical Release (With English Subtitles at PVR, Cinepolis, Inox & selected multiplexes)
Runtime: 160 minutes
User Rating:
Solomon Caesar (Bobby) plays the brother of the big daddy villain who usually instigates the ‘war-like’ scenario in such masala films. He does the usual villainy thing of burning down a police station only to flee away to Malaysia. But, how can he? Because someone from the remaining police force from the attack will get up in rage to take revenge, hire a professional to look out for Solomon, and kill him, right? Yeah! That happens.
Waltair Veerayya (Chiranjeevi) who’s fighting some court case & urgently needs 25 lakhs to bribe the judge, takes up the project of kidnapping Solomon given by CI Seethapati (Rajendra Prasad). Of course, if you go to Malaysia living in the exact same hotel as Solomon, won’t you trigger-wake his big bad brother Michael Caesar (Prakash Raj)? Of course, you’ll! That happens but Veerayya also has a past connection with Michael, also revealing he has a step-brother in police named Vikram (Ravi Teja) who is exactly opposite to him in everything but one thing – blind fan following. What happens next is something you’ll see coming from miles.
Bobby Kolli’s Story, Dialogues & Direction remains to be the top 3 things why this film doesn’t live up to the huge promised hype for Chiru fans. Telugu cinema continues the streak of delivering unbearable second half, the zone shifting from an entertaining thriller to the most erroneous one that would pinch your soul.
Some blame for this would also have to be laid on Kona Venkat G & K Chakravarthy’s lousy screenplay. It starts well with a really impactful flashback sequence involving Prakash Raj helping his brother played by Bobby Simha, but slowly the treatment starts getting generic shouting the fact that the makers must have gradually lost interest in ending this one.
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This film also highlights the same problem of using the actress just to pan the camera from top to bottom her body as the leading hero, who is 31 years older than her, scans/ogles her as he falls in love. The romantic angle still remains to be one such thing in many South Indian films which isn’t progressing at all.
Credit where due, Chiranjeevi at the age of 67, is a magnanimous ball of energy. Ravi Teja, who’s 13 years younger than Chiru seemed to lack the spark while acting when compared to Chiru Garu. Ravi plays his role carrying a single expression throughout, even while he’s dancing.
Shruti Haasan’s character does try to find some redemption by being a ‘RAW’ agent but it’s executed so poorly that it reflects in her performance as well. Prakash Raj for the nth time plays the villain who gets outsmarted by the hero at every juncture of the story repeating everything we’ve seen before.
Bobby Kolli’s direction portrays the two schools of filmmaking, the first one being the great experimental one in which he designs west-inspired scenes and the second is where he delivers the typical, cliched, stereotypical fan-service scenes. The problem is that the scenes from the second type of filmmaking overweigh the first by a huge margin.
Devi Sri Prasad’s music creates more problems for the script than solving them. I’m not going to listen to a single song from the album ever again.
All said and done, Chiranjeevi’s mega-ultra-pro-max mass masala entertainer is nothing but serving extremely mediocre content to the fans in the guise of a big banner fan-gift festive release.
Two stars!
Waltair Veerayya releases on 13 January, 2023.
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