Nagaram Review

It is quite surprising why soft heroes like Srikanth and Jagapathi Babu try their best to earn a mass image. They fare well in good family subjects. Srikanth, who was off the success track for quite some time, had just started his winning streak with films like Operation Duryodhana and Yamagola Mallee Modalayindi. It seems, Srikanth has accepted the film just out of sheer friendship he has with MV Choudary, who ventured into film production from real estate business. Generally, the debut films of directors would be hits, but director CC Srinivas instead of coming with a story on his own, depended on a successful Tamil film Thalai Nagaram and the Tamil influence continued to remain in the film giving a big dud to Srikanth.

Right (Srikanth) is the right hand for a local mafia don called Khasim bhai (Pradeep Rawat). Right doesn't know anything except to follow his boss' orders provided it is justified. Once Khasim orders Right to kill an officer, who has become a thorn in leg for a minister (Ashok Kumar). However, Right does not kill him as he is against killing innocent children. So the Nazar, son of Khasim, executes the murder. This leads to a rift between Right and Nazar. Khasim's son (GV) chalks out a plan and sends Right to jail. Incidentally, he dies in the hands of Right's staunch associate (Ajay). Irked over this, Khasim kills him. At the instance of ACP VJ Choudary (Jagapatibabu), Right realizes that doing goondaism is no good and decides to join the mainstream. At this juncture, (Kaveri Jha) comes to Right for her research on goondaism. In this backdrop, ACP Choudary gets transferred and another ACP (Kalabhavan Mani) takes charge. Being totally corrupt, the new ACP forces Right to return to goondaism again, but the latter refuses. The new ACP arrests Right's sister on charges of ganja sale, when she comes to the station to enlarge Right. She gets raped by jail staffers and with the humiliation she commits suicide. Fearing threat to their lives, both the minister and Khasim tell the new ACP to kill Right. The corrupt cop takes him to city outskirts to kill him in an encounter. In the climax, the hero kills everyone, who are troubling the society to ensure the city a peaceful place.

PLUS: The only plus point is the performance of Srikanth. Though he is not happy with the role, he has tried his best to manage. Once again, He has showed good ease in action scenes and maintained certain dignity. Jagapathi Babu appears in just couple of scenes and has nothing much to perform, but his role is portrayed in a novel way. Other artists including Ashok Kumar, Pradeep Rawat, Ajay, GV have done justice to their roles. Kalabhavan Mani continued his mimicry and is okay as a baddie in police department.

MINUS: Poor and slippery screenplay, utter confusing narration, lack of coordination between scenes, which appear very disjointed, picturization of scenes without logic and there are many more such lapses in the film. However, one thing is clear that the film earned a flop talk right on the first day first show due to the lapses behind the screen and not because of the artists present on the screen. All the artists have given their best but absence of a gripping story and dreadful screenplay tested the patience of the audiences. Those, who patiently waited till the climax had to heave a sigh of relief with the 'The end' card.

REMARKS: Music by Chakri is below average. The director has failed to make use of the presence of several good artists, leave alone the item song by Manisha Koirala. Even the comedians present in the film failed to provide adequate comic relief to the audiences. Moreover, Nandyala Ravi especially employed to script the comedy track, who miserably failed in his endeavour. Dialogues in the film are just good in parts. As a whole, there is nothing good to watch except the picturization of a couple of action scenes.

Cast: Srikanth, Kaveri Jha, Jagapatibabu, Pradeep Rawat, Ashokkumar, Kalabhavan Mani, GV, Ajay, Jayaprakash Reddy, Raghubabu, Ali, Venumadhav, Brahmanandam, LB Sriram, Sivaji Raja, Nalla Rajesh, Ram Jagan, Manisha Koirala, Bhuvaneswari, Bhargavi, Apoorva and others.

Credits: Music – Chakri, Lyrics – Veturi, Bhuvanachandra, Bhaskarabhatla Ravikumar, Dialogues – Swamiji-Vijay, Comedy track – Nandyala Ravi, Camera – Sarat, Editing – Gauthamraju, Art – Bhaskara Raju, Action – Ram-Lakshman, Presents – MV Choudary, Producers – M Anjibabu and P Kishorebabu, screenplay and direction – CC Srinivas.

Banner: Mac Media and Blue Sky Entertainments

Released on: March 6, 2008

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