Film: Dhruva
Cast: Ram Charan, Aravind Swamy, Rakul Preet, Navdeep
Director: Surender Reddy
Keep your friends close, your enemies closer — reads a popular saying. In a battle of wits between two personalities, it’s vital to understand the psyche of your opponent. To analyse their strengths and weaknesses and study each move. Surender Reddy pits two big personalities against each other in Dhruva and takes the viewers on a journey full of mindgames and one-upmanship.
Slick and gripping, Dhruva succeeds in keeping the viewers guessing, but a long, drawn climax ensures that the audience walks out with mixed feelings.
Dhruva (Ram Charan) is a sharp, efficient police officer who finishes top of his class and is excellent at studying and nabbing criminals. Along with a team of like-minded officers, Dhruva tracks down high-profile criminals and is on the hunt for a worthy opponent who can match his skills. He finds that in spades in Siddharth Abhimanyu, an award-winning scientist, who’s actually a ruthless criminal who controls all the top politicians and bureaucrats.
What follows is a see-saw of mindgames and mini-battles as Dhruva and Siddharth make full use of the set of skills at their disposal to get the better of each other.
As far as edge-of-the seat thrillers go, Dhruva ticks most of the boxes. It’s edgy, racy and has constant twists and turns to keep the viewers gripped. Surender Reddy does well not to shift away from the essence of the story to put in comedy or romantic elements. The director also resists the temptation to have a full-blown fight sequence between Dhruva and Siddharth — and manages to stay classy till the end.
That’s perhaps the film’s greatest success — it delivers everything that it promises and doesn’t deviate from the subject at any point of time (save for a couple of songs, perhaps to justify the heroine’s place in the film). Despite being a deterrent, the songs have great visual appeal, thanks to cinematography by PS Vinod. The background score by the young Hiphop Tamizha works well.
When you have a run-time of 165 minutes for an edge-of-the-seat thriller, you’re asking for trouble. The film could easily have been chopped by at least 30 minutes. When a good film gets stretched beyond its potential, a lot can go wrong. And that’s exactly what happens with Dhruva. The director gets carried away and perhaps puts in one twist too many, and the viewers end up waiting for the curtains to close.
Ram Charan is an actor with a limited range of expressions, but a role like Dhruva suits him perfectly. He looks fierce, razor-sharp and supremely fit. This is undoubtedly Charan’s most understated performance, and he would do well to kick on from here and take up roles which suit his range of expressions.
Arvind Swamy steals the show as the antagonist, almost strolling through his role with effortless ease. He shows his class with subtle (yet strong) emotions and looks stylish.
Rakul looks gorgeous and puts in an earnest performance. Navdeep and Posani Murali Krishna also put in noteworthy performances.
While Dhruva is a decent thriller which has entertainment in spades, you cannot help but wonder what might have been had it been a bit more crisp.