Even though Saripodhaa Sanivaaram is billed as an action thriller, there are only a handful of sequences where the action fully flourishes on screen. However, Vivek Athreya channels his most exuberant self for these bits, going all out with his visual style. Most of them are executed with classic hero elevation swagger, but two particularly stand out. While one grabs your attention with its extraordinary shots and lighting, it’s the other one, staged at a crowded pub, that truly gives you a thrilling high. As our protagonist Surya (Nani) finally goes to confront the bad guy, the anticipation of him holding back at first, then going after him, and the reason behind it, gives this action-packed moment its true emotional punch.
Vivek Athreya has a clear vision—pushing the envelope for a quintessential action movie while playing within the conventional terrain—and his ambition is visible in almost every decision he makes as a writer and a director. There are so many moments and small touches where it’s evident that Vivek is going for a deliberately off-beat mood. The title card doesn’t stay on screen for long. For the classic hero intro scene, there is something unheroic about Nani’s appearance that offsets the elevation moment. At its core, the film remains a quintessential hero vs villain movie. On a philosophical level, there are plenty of interesting ideas that are touched upon. However, I was hoping for more exploration on the two sides of anger, the channelled and the misplaced, that manifest in our hero and villain, respectively.
There are several moments where the film ventures into comic book-like territory. This mood is most evident in the way Vivek writes the scenes between Dayanand (SJ Suryah) and Kurmanand (Murali Sharma). Even when things go comically disarray from Dayanand’s perspective, the director never lets us forget the evil that lurks behind the goofiness. This decision to give a layering to the standard villain figure works wonderfully. In fact, such layering is lent to many other writing choices. There is a poignant subplot about a family facing domestic violence, there is a promise waiting to be made from an expecting mother. The film has a lot of these heavy, emotional elements embedded throughout its genre-driven narrative.
The world of Sokulapalem is a crucial element here, and Vivek displays an incredible talent for world-building with a great visual economy. If Ante Sundaraniki was an intimate story about two people and their families, Saripodhaa Sanivaaram almost feels like an epic, considering how the action of its two leading men changes the fate of an entire neighbourhood (Special mention to Jakes Bejoy who delivers a rousing background score). The first half is a fabulous set-up of this universe, and the much-awaited payoff, which shows you how the worlds of Surya and Dayanand, and their anger, collide. At the same time, the only thread that doesn’t work is the transformation of the Sokulapalem people, after the vigilante’s arrival—and that plays a major role in how the narrative of Saripodhaa Sanivaaram culminates. Vivek tries to pack in a lot in the final 40 minutes, and the result is not particularly seamless.
Also, like in all his previous films, Athreya writes his screenplay in a way characters deliberately conceal key bits of information from the viewers, and yet the revelation unfolds in such a manner that doesn’t feel gimmicky or manipulative. The film’s best-written and the funniest moment arrives, ironically, in the intro scene for our antagonist CI Dayanand (SJ Suryah). As Dayanand interrogates a man he has abducted, asking him about his son and who he loves more, the conversation leads to a rollicking revelation about Dayanand himself, his childhood, and his baggage from the past. SJ Suryah knocks it out of the park in the scene, as he does throughout the film.
Saripodhaa Sanivaaram only further cements the fact that Vivek Athreya is one of the most exciting writers of contemporary Telugu cinema, and there couldn’t have been a better filmmaker than him to attempt a reinvention of the quintessential Telugu action movie.