Worth a penny? Nah!

American novelist James Baldwin said: All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists if they are to survive are forced at last to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up. Some truth that! Stranded with a script that deals with a critical look at the desire for money and a talent that is shy of making claims to the description of an artist as the quote above would suggest, Krishna Vamsi ensures this week’s ensemble of cast, crew and story for about two hours and more. Call this cinema in a very broad sense and no more.

The reeking double standard, the obviously hypocritical stance, the melodramatic essay through an amateur treatment make for laborious viewing , perhaps a tad more than the effort in the very making of the film. The thematic rejection is not so much for the stance as for the approach of the argument. The film labours to convey that man will do anything to make an extra (fast) buck- which includes making of a film with formulistic inputs.

The story (oh!) deals with the avaricious politician (Charan Raj) - the epitome of all perceivable evil. He is the black bad guy with tonnes of stacked up currency for the ensuing election to the post of the top political leadership. In the old city of Hyderabad is Prakash (Nani), an unabashed worshipper of money. With a no way to go career as a garment model in the old city, he dreams wild of big money. He with a couple of equally clueless, useless and senseless friends represent the local Don Quixote module. In the neighbourhood is Noor (Catherine Teresa) who is smitten by the love bug and cannot see beyond Prakash. Her family is debt ridden and the local goon Subbu Yadav (Subramanyam Karra) has just crushed all the bangles of the old city to tell a poor widow that he is powerful and if the debt due to him is not paid up in less than a week, Noor will have to take the Kota route- Lady Warrens Profession. Prakash sees ‘money’ and opportunity in Sweety (Siddhika Sharma) who is none other than the daughter of the Minister and just as ill behaved. Her sense of adventure includes soliciting goons in the flesh market and then running for dear life. With Noor realising that she has no chance to marry Prakash, she decides to play martyr and agrees for a nikhaah with the old Dubai guy- only to be kidnapped by Prakash. On the run they find a car which they find handy for escaping, little realising that it is stacked with Rs 50 crores of the political goon. The chase of the political goon for the money, the local goon for the gal and the police guy (Raja Ravinder as Daniel and Duvvasi Mohan) for anything they can lay their hands is what follows.

None in the cast deserve any special mention except that even in this “don’t expect anything” film Siddhika Sharma puts on an accent and gets on your nerves. Nani passes muster.

Of the film and the stance of the filmmaker, one is reminded of the famous sequence involving Francisco D’Anconia in Atlas Shrugged when he points out to the virtues of money and says: Money is not the tool of the moochers who claim your product by tears, or of the looters who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil? Blessed with being unaware of such a possible stance the filmmaker takes on the ‘money is root cause of all evil’ theory. To conclude the best is to refer again to the same work when a character says: Don’t let him disturb you. You know, money is the root of all evil- and he’s the typical product of money.