In Telugu movies, heroes are majorly treated as Demi Gods. They can do anything and nothing will happen to them even after getting stabbed or shot in the heart. They don’t even require any nurse or attendant’s attention to get well. Within ten hours they are in healthy condition to fly and fight as well. That’s the kind of heroism we have been growing on and that is what we get in this Balakrishna movie, Paisa Vasool too.
Plot : Theda Singh (Nandamuri Balakrishna) gets appointed as a RAW infiltrate in the mafia gang run by Bob Marley. He tries to safe guard a beauty, Harika (Muskaan) whom he loves. There are many gangsters who are after her and Theda keeps killing them. Harika is said to have a secret from her elder sister, Sarika (Shriya Saran) and the goons are after that. Well, you can guess how the story moves and how it ends too…
Performances : Nandamuri Balakrishna is a caged lion and whenever he gets a character to unleash his energy levels in the right way, he made an impact. Here too he uses all the energy he has to please his fans and he succeeds for the most part. But his voice seems to have aged more than his determination to show all the energy. Even though he delivers the lines well enough, his voice doesn’t suit them much. Shriya Saran has developed her acting skills very much but this character of Sarika is off no use for her. Muskaan Sethi is a good looking girl and she might get opportunities to show off her skin more on screen.
Kyra Dutt has some skills but she is more at home in dancing and shaking her legs to the tune. As ACP, she has a serious character but she manages to make it look funny on screen. Kabir Bedi, Pridhvi Raj and Ali have been wasted.
Technicalities : Junaid Siddique is the editor of this film. Well, he tries to cut the film on the basis of the script but he needs to understand where to use the best shots in an action sequence and where to let the pace build-up. He manages to not make use of the few best shots in the fight choreography effectively. Mukesh, the Cinematography had to give his best to the movie but he just does a job. He lights up a set with colors that are dark and rich so that the film looks costly enough. But his work is too lazy for a big film.
Music by Anup Rubens works for BG Score but doesn’t work in songs. Be just gives some mediocre tunes that we can forget after coming out of the theatre. Puri Jagannadh has become a synonym for heroes with attitude but his heroes who used to be adorably wrong have turned out to be care-free without a purpose and just adding a Pokiri style script to half-baked scenes might please fans but as a story that makes no sense at all.
His writing is becoming lazy day by day and the director seems to have taken it upon him to complete a movie rather than making one like he did earlier in his career. The pacing is haywire, the narration is not strong at all. And the director who challenged the norms of commercial cinema once is resorting to take the safest route possible and that ends up making him more and more predictable and that’s a worrisome sign.
Analysis : The core emotional strength for Pokiri or Idiot has come from the on the point plot development and narration that holds the story tight. But the same director has descended so much that he is unable to even construct a good scene other than writing one or two good one-liners for his actors. Anyways, he makes a movie that pleases fans of NBK and as the actor and director suggested in the movie, outsiders can think they are not allowed to watch this movie.
Rating : 2/5
