RGV's Killer Mania and Fear Phobia

Sending a chill across the spine with pervading gloominess cracked open with nerve racking guns shots fired ceaselessly; bloodshed eventually becomes a common day affair. Tracking director Ram Gopal Varma's film records, fear and cut-throat killer instinct are the nuclei of every story. Satya, Company, Sarkar, Sarkar Raj and the latest Contract and Phoonk unearth our latent insecurities in a manner hitherto unseen or rather unheard of in Indian celluloid.

Cashing in on our hidden phobias and extracting our eagerness to challenge ourselves every other day, Ram Gopal Varma's movies have often treaded on bumpy roads. Not spinning any family melodramas or love stories, the basic essence is fear and the thirst for power. However time and again

as he comes up with yet another thriller, the master craftsman's sensitivity to fear, terrorism and underworld-politics nexus bares its yet another gory face. Love relations are poignantly touched upon, but never to the extent of a cliched romance. With the then unpopular faces Vivek Oberoi, Chakravarthy, or to the latest Adhvik Mahajan, Varma deftly hints upon an inkling of a chance of it happening in our own neighbourhood.

So one is again probed to ask, are directors morally bound, or can creativity take wings to horizons anew or do they guide us through bed a of roses with thorns sucked deep within. Varma has the answer; he cannot detach himself from his socio-cultural environment, he is bound to it and responsible to the core. So where does the rather hazy borderline appear between ruthless massacre and the fear to be afraid?