NTR Mahanayakudu

NTR Mahanayakudu is the completion of the entire story of Legend NTR, at least till the part where NBK, his son is happy to tell. Krish made the movie and after first part’s failure, he is said to have taken more care about the second part. Let’s see how he delivered this time around …

Plot:: NTR (Nandamuri Balakrishna) is pushed to his limits as a new politician and adding to it, his wife, Basavatarakam (Vidya Balan) suffers from cancer. With all the emotional turmoil he has to face, he is even cheated by his colleagues powered by the ego of Nadendla Bhaskar Rao (Sachin Khadekar). CBN (Rana) enters as a savior giving a boost to the resilience of NTR. But could they win? History says they did. How? Watch the movie to know …

Performances:: Nandamuri Balakrishna as NTR lived in the role and gave his best to the film. He might not be able to deliver such subtle yet strong performance again on-screen ever. He is more suitable as 60-year-old NTR and never once missed the beat.

Vidya Balan had good chemistry with Balakrishna and did her best with the material given to her. Rana Daggubati just looked awkward as CBN. He did feel like a misfit.

Kalyanram is good but his role is very limited. All the others are fine. Sachin Khadekar, Bharat Reddy are too good!

Technicalities:: Gnanasekhar VS gave the visuals a good texture and sets some authenticity. But he did fail to bring in more details to let the emotions feel more real.

MM Keeravani as a composer doesn’t need to prove anything but he does seem to be more alive while scoring BGM track than songs. The songs are almost like deity songs (Sankeerthanas) yet not worthy to remember.

Arram Rajasekhar as an editor seemed to have a job cut off to just stitch the movie in a crisp run-time. Many things seem to have been changed in the last minute as line changes and change in dubbing is visible.

Sai Madhav Burra again tried to win us with his dialogues. He could get in some good lines but none of them have been noteworthy as expected. He needed to be in top form but at places, he showed his class.

Krish as a writer-director couldn’t really bring any of the story arcs he took up to tell the tale of NT Ramarao on-screen. His depiction of politics is not as mature as one would expect from a maker like him. He just took a lot of material and distracted all of it from the main storyline than connecting it all well enough. His direction too seems to be distracted and more rushed than ever. He did have good episodes on paper but they did not transfer effectively on-screen.

Analysis:: Biopics are made to really depict the unknown struggle or to remember a person and celebrate their life. From MS Dhoni to Sachin to many other films, their purpose is to not make them as gods or heroes but show their grit and strength to overcome all hurdles to achieve what they could.

Krish missed that point again in the second part too. Rather than concentrating on nostalgia, he should have depicted the story and emotions more effectively. Even though he came with crisper version, he did not have time to correct all the things that went wrong in the first part. The introduction of the love story angle felt forced into the movie. Even though he did a better job than Kathanayakudu, still more is desired. Better attempt but still falls short.

Rating: 2/5

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