A disjointed political farce from RGV

The always-in-news film director Ram Gopal Varma is back in his familiar territory, adopting his usual spit-and-scoot technique of filmmaking.

Right from the time when the promos were announced 'Amma Rajyamlo Kadapa Biddalu' ( revised title) which the maverick helmsman has co-directed with Siddhartha Thatolu was bound to get undue and constant media attention, which ultimately has cut both ways for the team behind it.

After a bout of statements and counter statements and court interventions, the film, a 132-minute long venture, released this week, takes the viewers into the violent political atmosphere of Vijayawada, prior to the 2019 elections and after.

The characters are real life, (despite a disclaimer at the beginning of the film and a tongue-in-cheek card thanking all politicians) and so are the incidents shown, a no-holds-barred battle between the political formations of Chandrababu Naidu and Jagan Mohan Reddy.

Clearly reserving their pique for Pawan Kalyan and Naidu, the directors put together a first half in which the viral videos of confrontations in the state assembly are recreated on the big screen.

The murder of one of Naidu's trusted accomplices and who is responsible for it and the mayhem that follows it is reserved for the second.

Obviously, having seen a series of films in the same league over the past few years from RGV, the viewers do not get to see anything scandalous, sensational or novel.

The blood and gore and the sinister shadow games that the bad guys play are all predictable. A cameo of Brahmanandam, who walks through his role is also not very convincing.

What takes the cake is the imperious assertion of the director himself at the end when he pontificates that the viewers are not bothered about anything except entertainment, even if they have their own little theories about it all.

If what he presents would suffice as entertainment, then RGV would not be playing publicity games of this nature, one feels. This film too joins the list of his other presentations as a classic example of 'willing to strike but afraid to wound'.

Full credit however for the auto driver-turned-actor Dhananjay Prabhune of Mumbai who looks like Chandrababu Naidu and internalizes his body language amazingly well. Ajmal Ameer too does a decent job impersonating Jagan.