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DarkTornado369
Reviews
Maestro (2021)
Faithful Remake
Pretty much a scene-by-scene remake of the original. I only preferred Harshavardhan's portrayal of the doctor to the Hindi version. Nithin was no where close to Ayushman, Tamanna was good and Nabha Natesh was barely okay. There was also unnecessary lavishness (the restaurant did not look like it was going out of business, at all! Nor did it look like a place where independent artists perform) like a typical tollywood movie. One thing that really struck me was when Mangli (The lottery ticket seller) asked the hero, "Girlfriend...Boyfriend...?" In a movie that did not even have the on-screen kiss of the original. While I love the inclusion, it really didn't feel like something a roadside seller would be open-minded about. If this movie released on the big screen, the audience would have been in splits when the song "om mahaprana deepam" played. Amazing timing!
V (2020)
An Overhyped, Nonsensical Cat n Mouse Cop Drama
Hype is a double-edged sword. Sometimes it can work wonders, like it does for almost every MCU movie, but it can prove to be equally disastrous; the movie I - Manoharudu from 2015 comes to mind. While obvious from the title that this movie falls into the latter category, at the end of the day, I - Manoharudu was a reasonably decent movie just spoiled by the extraordinary hype and the trailers. I can't even say that much for this, it's just a bad film; there's no sugar-coating it. When I watched the teaser of V six months ago, 2 out of the 5 odd dialogues seemed tailor-made just for the teaser. One could still give the benefit of doubt to the maker Mohan Krishna Indraganti, because it was Nani's 25th film; obviously there were going to be scenes catered just toward the hardcore fans. The trailer was also similar, but I never would've imagined that the movie would be this senseless. I honestly think the OTT release was a blessing in disguise for this film, it'd have bombed so hard in a usual box office release scenario. While the hype definitely increased exponentially because of the lockdown of theatres, the same can be said about the viewers. There's literally nothing else to watch in this space right now and unless the deal with Prime Video was very bad (which I highly doubt, given all the promotion on social media), this is the best that V could ever gross.
Moving to the story, Sudheer Babu plays an ideal good cop, who is the darling of media, only to be immediately dragged through mud because a serial killer challenges him publicly and the hero fails to catch him. The fight scene in the beginning is so reminiscent of the Baaghi Franchise which makes this film ideal for a remake as Baaghi 4 (I'm seriously not kidding!). I thought Tollywood is slowly moving away from these cliché beginnings after watching HIT, but nope! It was a one-time thing, apparently. On the subject of age-old concepts still in frequent use, why can't the lead pair dance to a normal song in a club like a normal couple would? For the love of god! Please stop wasting money on a bar song with equally cringy dances and dialogues, no one watches them! (Credit where due, at least
the tune is catchy) The first impression of Nani as the villain immediately gives away that he's not the actual "antagonist" and there's going to be a typical "twist" down the line. But I still kept my hopes up because the director's last film, Sammohanam, was very well written (despite being inspired from the Hollywood movie, Notting Hill). But I am not exaggerating one bit when I say that not even a single dialogue in the entire 140 minutes of runtime sticks in your mind. It's especially a surprise because this same guy wrote crisp, on-point lines in his last film. The premise is boring at best, but the utterly disappointing lines and the prolonged screenplay just ruin the film entirely.
The confrontation of Sudheer and Nani, both the love tracks, the comic angles (you keep expecting them because of the stellar cast) were all terrible. And let's not even touch logic and consistency. Seriously, in what phone does a call from an unknown number show up as "unknown" as if you saved the contact in the name "unknown"!? The hero almost catches up to the villain at half time, which reignites the hope for a better second half but
NOPE! RETCON! The hero gets hit by a car; nothing serious, even though it looks like it should've broken his leg (RIP Logic) and this is followed by a lame comeback from the villain. Even the climax where the lines are supposed to be hard hitting and emotional, I felt nothing. The stupid fights where the hero/villain uses a knife to outwit an M16A4
carrying terrorist, The lack of explanation as to why the protagonist returns his medal of valour when the bet/deal he made with the killer never went public; I could just go on and on. It is so ironic that the director went out of his way to take a sly dig at Boyapati, while the writing in this one is actually worse. A 20-minute run of the mill episode in Brooklyn 99, which is supposed to be more comic and less crime solving, holds your attention better.
Even worse, I enjoyed watching an out and out commercial flick like Sarrainodu over this. At one point, Tanikella Bharani asks the hero why he should believe him because there's no solid evidence or even a lead against Nani. It honestly feels like he's asking this on behalf of the audience. The cat-mouse storyline is not new by any means, but that's all the more reason to write the best possible, gripping narrative around it. Dhruva from 2016 is a classic example; it's not ground-breaking, but you never feel the lag except in the songs. On the topic of songs, that's probably the only good thing in this movie. Amit Trivedi composed some refreshing and catchy numbers on his Tollywood Debut in this era of rip-offs and remakes, Thaman gave his usual best as background score composer. Another thing to add to the laundry list of defects is the overuse of BGM. It gets super annoying after a certain point. There need not be a dozen instruments playing when the protagonist just gets down from a car and is walking! There's nothing inspiring in the cinematography section, the output is what you'd expect in a usual 25 cr film. Sudheer Babu and Nani get the most screen time and utilised it well, but there's only so much the actors can do in such a
lacklustre affair. Every other member of the supporting cast (most of them carried over from Sammohanam and Gentleman from 2016) is a royal waste of the budget. Especially Naresh and Aditi Rao Hydari. Nivetha Thomas at least gets to show off her expressive eyes in the bar number.
On the whole, I definitely would not recommend this movie unless you have all the time in the world to kill and just hellbent on watching the latest star-studded movie from Tollywood. Closing remarks; I'm genuinely stumped why Nani chose this to be his 25th film! Sudheer Babu gets more screentime, shows off his dancing and his impeccable physique while all Nani does is read lame lines specifically made for the trailer-teaser and gets a few minutes of slow-motion action sequences here and there. Just, Why!?