Debutant Anup can pat himself on his back, for Lakshmana is surely his film. Chandru's inspired take on the Telugu film Athanokkade released in 2005, gets a pinch of freshness because of the young aspirant.
The makers have made sure to bring in the nativity to the subject, the story sticks to the original and does not bring in any novelty.
As for the family drama, Lakshmana (Anup), who plays the title character, witnesses a tragedy at a very young age. His father, Ranadheera (Ravichandran), an ACP, has a conflict with gangster Desai (Pradeep Rawat ), which leads to the killing of the entire family.
Apart from Lakshmana, Anjali (Meghana Raj) and his uncle also survive the tragedy and stay together.
Later, Lakshmana is adopted and though he and Anjali study in the same college, they are not aware of each other's existence.
How they, together with their uncle, take revenge on Desai forms the rest of the story.
This is an effortless film coming from an experienced director like R Chandru. Keeping the love story, he brings in a hefty dose of action, fulfilling debutant Anup’s wish of being an 'action star'.
The film could have been much slicker. Not much work has gone in at the edit desk. Chandru has not made any effort to bring in any changes to the ready made plot.
Anup, who has two shades, one of a lover boy and another with grey tones, has done justice to both. He has a long way to go. Meghana Raj has scope for performance, which she has delivered quite well.
The lighter side of Lakshmana comes from Chikkanna while Ravichandran lends useful support with his cameo appearance as Police Officer. Joining the crazy star is a huge star cast that includes Avinash, Jai Jagadish and Suchendra Prasad, Prabhakar, Sridevi Vijayakumar among others. Sadhu Kokila is wasted.
With Arjun Janya's passable music and Santhosh Rai Pathaje's camera work, one can head to theatres only to encourage the newcomer, Anup.