SPYder

When Ambition looses sight of present danger, it ends up falling flat on the ground. Everyone wants to fly and however high you want to reach that wider your wings needs to be spread. Murugadoss, who couldn’t understand this while making 7th Sense, delivered a forgettable film and again, with SPYder though he sparkles occasionally, the overall punch goes missing here. Why you ask? Read complete review …

Plot : Shiva (Mahesh Babu) joins the call tapping department in Intelligence Bureau. Though he has greater skills than that he prefers to listening and recording the calls, so that he can “Help” to those who are in need. While, he loves being the saviour and God, he encounters a devilish challenge from a serial killer, Bhairavudu (SJ Suryah). He needs to trace him out and end his “Disaster” friendly approach towards balancing the humanity. How he does that? You have to watch it on screen ..

Performances : Mahesh Babu proves again that he is the trust-worthy performer in Telugu Cinema. He balances out the sheer passion of Shiva and his aggression with calm and calculative approach. His body language translates on to the screen very well, as a Spy and barring few instances, where he looks too wooden, his performance is really good.

SJ Suryah gets the best role that he can wish for in a big film. His performance also is top notch. He will be a value addition to any big film, that needs the antagonist to be slightly different from usual loud characters. His performance in the first scene itself is quite commendable and sets up the character really well.

Rakul Preet Singh, Bharat, Jaya Prakash, Shayaji Shinde are wasted in this movie. Rakul’s character is like cigarette break model, in the movie, who will let you come out of the intense drama, so that you can disconnect with the story very well.

Technicalities : Sreekar Prasad is a renowned editor but his work seems too jerky in this film. He doesn’t really give the movie the necessary racy cut and few scenes seems to just drag on and on. Also, longer the sequence, lesser the impact and thrill factors. He needed to tighten the movie from his end too.

Cinematography by Legend, Santhosh Shivan is good but it seems too cartoonish as the film runs towards the climax. The usage of colors and saturation in many sequences is too unrealistic for a Spy thriller, that wants to be real.

Harris Jayraj comes up with a strong Background score to compensate for the bad songs. His songs come as unwanted commercial breaks in the movie but his BGM provides the strong support to the scenes and vision of the director.

Writer-director A.R. Murugadoss is one man who has a great ambition and uses, larger than life thoughts in trying to make his point. But he does go overboard with his ideas and when that happens on a consistent basis he seems to go too outlandish. The same happens here in the second half, especially in the final 30 minutes of the film. Had he tried to curb his ambition, movie would have been a delightful entertainer if not, at least a passable one at best.

Analysis : Any movie is more or less a good story expanded into a perfect screenplay that engages the audiences and arrest them so much that they forget themselves for the runtime. When it comes to movies like SPYder, the stakes are high and you need everything to be in sync with the goal of the director. Here the director’s goal seems to be in North but his execution seems to be going South. On the whole, this movie is a missed opportunity for Mahesh and Murugadoss to deliver a Spy thriller with great punch!

Rating : 2/5

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