<i>Pokiri Pilla</i> Review

Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Mamata Mohandas is only saving grace

Once Sri Lanka was a volatile country. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam activists, popular as Tigers, remained a terror to the country's leadership, because of their terrorist activities. The Tigers used to fight for a separate state for Tamils. In order to maintain law and order and to ensure, the Indian government had sent a group of army in the name of Indian Peace Keeping Force. While maintaining the law and order the IPKF had mercilessly killed several tigers and in the process some innocents were also killed. Based on one such real life incident, AK Shahan prepared a story and made a film in Malayalam as Lanka. The same was dubbed into Telugu in the name of Pokiri Pilla.

Captain Shravan (Suresh Gopi) is an orphan. He joins the Indian Navy with pure merit and became a part of the IPKF. He is known for his shrewdness and an encounter specialist. After completing the operation in the IPKF, he retires from his service and starts business in Colombo itself and earns huge money. He has seven villas (big bungalows). He is known as quite romantic and keeps one girl each as house keeper in those villas and used to enjoy with them. Of all the villas, his favourite is Santa Maria. The housekeeper in-charge of that villa is a Sri Lankan girl with Indian origin. Her name is Dharani (Mamata Mohandas). A millionaire of the same island wants to get his sister Malaika married to Shravan. But Malaika rejects him, as Dharani reportedly told her that she is going to marry Shravan. In the flashback, Shravan reveals how Dharani became near to him. In fact, Dharani comes to his home claiming that she was an orphan. Shravan shows all his revenge on Dharani and mercilessly rapes for some months, besides harassing her in several ways, which he could not do to his eloped wife. On one such occasion, Dharani loses her eyesight when Shravan tortures her by pouring wax in her eyes. After Malaika rejects him, Shravan starts sympathizing with Dharani and they both fall in love with each other. Shravan marries her though she was blind and hands over his entire property to her. Then comes the fact comes to light that Dharani came to take revenge against him by joining hands with an LTTE activist. Shravan reportedly kills Dharani's father Krishnamurthy, who was a school teacher, besides her mother, brothers and sisters. In order to take a revenge against him, Dharani turns a pawn in the hands of LTTE. However, Dharani kills the LTTE activist after he seriously injures Shravan as she got his whole lot of property. She decides to liquidate all the properties in the name of Shravan returning to India. She reveals that she was good at acting and she was not really blind. The fact is that she wanted to kill Shravan and his six-year-old daughter and escape with the money by selling all the assets. She tries to kill the grievously injured Shravan, who can't move from the bed. However, while Dharani was administering poison-mixed milk to him, he cleverly keeps a part of the milk in his mouth and forcibly kisses her and makes her drink the poisonous milk. With this the film ends as a tragedy with both the hero and heroine succumb to poison.

Plus:
The performance of Mamata Mohandas who played the title role is at its best. She was gorgeous in several scenes and romantic with Suresh Gopi, shows perfect vengeance while doing the negative shade of her character. She also performed innocence with utmost ease. Her character in itself is a major asset and plus point for the film.

Minus:
Though it was first announced that the incident had occurred in Sri Lanka nativity is missing from the movie. Moreover, the editing is a little improper and there is a jump in scenes at times. Especially the audiences could not realize the break between the flashback and the regular story.

Remarks:
Music is just okay and the way of narration by the director has no particular pace. At times the narration goes very fast and some times it comes to dead zero. Cinematography is okay and Mamata Mohandas' performance only could save the film. A film worth watching once.

Cast: Suresh Gopi, Mamata Mohandas and others

Credits:
Presenter - Ketireddy Jagadeeswara Reddy
Producer: S Hariesh Reddy
Story, screenplay and direction - AK Shahan.
Banner: Dhruti Cinema

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