Shankar IPS – Review

Director MS Ramesh, who has earlier introduced actors like Devaraj and Saikumar through the roles of honest police officers, has now come out with another dare devil cop"s story. His latest movie Shankar IPS shows 'Black Cobra' Vijay in total new getup. And Vijay rocks the show with his action-packed performance with his six pack abs.

Shankar IPS is an action movie, which has almost all the commercial elements. Duniya Vijay is the show man in the film. The main highlights of film are Vijay"s muscle show, racy stunts, Ragini Dwivedi"s skin show, Ramesh"s punchy dialogues and tight screenplay and Gurukiran"s background score. The sad thing is that besides using his six pack body for fights, Vijay uses it for skin show, which appears irrelevant and mean before Ragini"s show.

Director MS Ramesh has tried to throw good light on the police department, which has been often targeted in recent films. The film is all about a poor and orphan boy turning an honest police officer to take strict action against corrupt and cruel people. It deals with contemporary issues like acid attacks and plight of women employees in call centres. The film also refers to Afzal Guru issue and Kasab's sentence.

Shankar Prasad (Vijay) is an upright cop, who does not tolerate injustice and corruption. Business tycoon Saklej (Avinash) son attacks Miss India contestant Shilpa (Catherine) with acid and escapes from the court of law. Helpless Shankar resigns from his post to take strong action on the acid attacker. He takes law in his hands in order to punish the guilty. What happens next will form the climax of the film.

The tailor-made role of a police officer suits Vijay very well and he has worked very hard to get six packs to suit the role. He has shown lot of energy in action scenes and is also successful in impressing the viewers. But with his lengthy and meaningless monologues, he tests the patience of the audiences in the second half.

Newbie Catherine Tresa is good in her role, but Ragini Dwivedi does not have much scope and has been used as a glamour doll. The director has given more scope to Vijay"s role. So Rangayana Raghu, Avinash, Shobhraj and Sanket Kashi's characters will not grow more.

The songs composed by Gurukiran are average, but his background score is far better than that. The songs like 'Chumbanakke ninna Olavina Avhana…." and 'Satyam Sundaram…" are good to listen. Dasari Seenu"s camera work is really good in Vijay"s action sequences and Ragini"s sensuous number.

However, the movie Shankar IPS is good treat for Vijay fans.

Producer: K Manju

Director: M S Ramesh

Cast: Vijay, Ragini Dwivedi, Catherine Treasa, Rangayana Raghu, Avinash, Shobhraj, Sanket Kashi and others.

Music: Gurukiran