180 – Movie Review

By Ramchander

Popular ad filmmaker Jayendra is making his debut with 180. It is a bilingual film, which is simultaneously made in Tamil and Telugu. Siddharth, who worked with Jayendra in the early days of his career, has done the film as a goodwill gesture. Nithya Menon and Priya Anand have played the female leads. It is a love story with a tragic backdrop.

Story:
Ajay (Siddharth) is a doctor by profession. He is working in San Francisco. Once a girl from India named Renuka (Priya Anand) is admitted to his hospital and both of them fall in love with each other. Their love gets green signal from both the families and they marry soon. While they are leading a happy life, Ajay goes for a medical checkup for some insurance purpose and learns that he is suffering from cancer, which is in advanced stage. Neither it can be cured with chemotherapy nor there are chances of survival. Even if he gets operated, he could only leave for 180 days at max. So Ajay goes into deep depression. Renuka could not digest the fact and struggles a lot to console Ajay. To give her relief from the mental struggle, Ajay writes all his property in a will to Renuka, leaves the house, and reaches India. He learns from a small boy that when you are aware that death is inevitable, live the life and enjoy the moment. He moves freely with all the street kids by helping them. His attitude to help the kids attracts Vidya (Nithya Menon), who is a journalist. She admires him and tries to find out who was he but she could not. Soon, she falls in love. What happens next should be seen on-screen.

Performance:
Siddharth has done a perfect job in this film. He has maintained good comedy timing and in sorrowful scenes too he showed good body language and histrionics. He maintained the same ease in love scenes and in pathos. Priya Anand should be commended for giving a good performance. She has almost equaled Siddharth in acting. She is also good in romantic and love scenes. Nitya Menon is okay but she has a little scope to perform. Other artistes including Mouli, Tanikella Bharani and Sri Charan have given their best in their respective roles. Others are satisfactory.

Technical:
The story and screenplay by Subha and Jayendra reminds the audiences of Gitanjali of Nagarjuna. It appears that the story is a rehashed version of the classic film. In that film there is only one heroine who was also on the deathbed but in this film, it is only the hero who awaits death. The dialogues in the film are good in parts and Umarji Anuradha needs to be complimented for elevating some scenes with the dialogues. Cinematographer Balasubramaniem has made use of the camera to capture the beautiful locales in San Francisco. Especially the picturisation of the first song in a very slow motion was a good experiment. Editing by Kishore should have been a little better by scissoring some lengthy scenes, especially, the pathos scenes involving Siddharth. The narration of the film is very slow. Being an ad filmmaker he has concentrated more on visuals and ignored the script. The narration of the subject is very slow and tests the patience of young and mass audiences. The film would run better in A class centres.

Remarks:
One should have lots of patience to watch the movie.

Cast: Siddharth, Nithya Menon, Priya Anand, Mouli, Tanikella Bharani, Gita, M.S. Narayana, Lakshmi Ramakrishnan, Janaki Sabesh, Sricharan, Misha Ghoshal, Cees Van Toledo, Xango Henry, Manager Cheena
Credits: Cinematography – Balasubramaniem, Editing – Kishore, Story & Screenplay – Subha & Jayendra, Dialogues - Umarji Anuradha, Lyrics – Vanamaali, Music – Sarat, Art – V. Selva Kumar, Choreographers – Dinesh Kumar, Prasanna Sujit, Direction – Jayendra
Banner: Sathyam Cinemas and Aghal Films
Released on: June 25, 2011.

Advertisement

Get Instant News Updates
Enable
x
Notification Settings X
Time Settings
Done
Clear Notification X
Do you want to clear all the notifications from your inbox?
Settings X
X