Movie: Saakshyam
Cast: Bellamkonda Sreenivas, Pooja Hegde, Jagapati Babu, Rao Ramesh
Direction: Sriwass
Rating:
Bellamkonda Sreenivas’s supernatural thriller, Saakshyam starts off on a promising note, as ruthless, cruel and sycophant Munuswamy (Jagapati Babu), along with his three brothers, grisly kills the entire family of Raju (Sharath Kumar), except a kid and destroys all the evidence. But as the voice over of Prakash Raj says, when there is no evidence, nature turns out to be the witness and nobody can escape Karma.
At a time we wait for a riveting revenge drama to unfold, the story neither tries to get serious nor takes the ironic route entirely making you quiver like the toddler, in this film, falling into a tipper truck carrying soil. Inventive concepts don’t always translate into intriguing films. And undoubtedly, director Sriwass, known for his power-packed action entertainers has redeemed himself with a unique premise laden with emotional potential, but he faltered and never offered thrilling experience by reducing it with tried-and-tested gimmicks.
The problem is he couldn’t escape genre conventions and fallen into the trap of commercial cinema with poor placement of songs, plenty of violence, cringe-worthy melodrama and regressive romantic sequences.
The director invested too heavily on Bellamkonda Sreenivas’s (seen as Vishwa, a video game director) macho image and not enough in handling the proceedings. He has taken entire first half before revealing the film’s most-awaited episode of the protagonist finding himself in a tricky situation by eliminating the brothers of Munuswamy, one after another, because of a chain of connected events, developed for a video game. While the first one seems exciting, the following levels are predictable and zany.
The writing here is never consistent. There are laughs to be had between Soundarya Lahari (Pooja Hegde), who gets introduced like a god-woman, moralising culture and philosophy of life. One of her devotees even jokes that she is yet to make her television debut.
The film in its own way is scriptural in its dilemma, though the director uses the word destiny when what he is really talking about is Karma and nature -- such as earth, wind, water, fire and space. The film isn’t all dialogue, but there’s some unusual disconnection between the story and the action. It’s not a distinguished film, but exploiting a novel idea with a talented cast including Rao Ramesh, Jagapathi Babu, Pavitra Lokesh and Vennela Kishore, the director had brought weird substance and impact to the core idea. The vision of Munuswamy cut off the arms of a girl, orphan kids dying in the soil, etc are scary.
Bellamkonda achieves believability with a graceful, restrained performance. Pooja Hegde gets more screen time in this film compared to her last outing DJ and she does a good job. Jagapati Babu makes a menacing Munuswamy and he is aided well by Ravi Kishan and Ashutosh Rana. The rest of the cast barely make an impact. Sriwass fails to bring all the elements together, and while the film has plenty of promise and rage, all it lacks is interrelation and slickness. Some sort of reality would have brought this subject to life. Watch this film if you have nothing else to do.
— Murali Krishna CH
muralikrishna.db@newindianexpress
@onlymurali