Run-of-the-mill, yet entertaining

Title : Run Raja Run
Cast : Sharwanand, Seerat Kapoor and Sampath Raj
Music: : Ghibran
Direction : Sujeeth Sign
Rating : **1/2
Like : Sharwanand
UnLike : Too many loose ends

The plan is to entertain. From pompous to formulistic to credible the journey in about two hours touches it all. Why bother to be creative when the shelf is brimming with templates and the cast is without a choice to mouth the inane and navigate the insane. The ingredients of ‘the commercial entertainer (an euphemism for crass unimaginative takes) are put in place and this time it could well take the maker laughing all way to the bank happy and being rejected by the critic — that known spoil sport. Just as the character in the script is looking for a bakra– the naïve unsuspecting sacrificial lamb so is the filmmaker. Only we aren’t script dictated or paid. On the other hand we are script victims and pay for it. Now to the tale of our seeming bakra – or the seeming one at half time:

Raja (Sharwanand) is the proverbial good at everything but good for nothing lad in town. The never say die romanticist is forever falling in love and finds his lady love Priya (Seerat Kapoor) who happens to be the daughter of the local police commissioner (Sampath Raj). He woos her in a Nano car so long that you wonder if this is a commercial for the car that did not take off. The gal and her weighing machine challenged friend (Vidyullekha Raman) are out to keep the catch. In the background is the story of a group of masked guys on a kidnap spree, kidnapping for ransom police officials and MLAs. The commissioner’s daughter is engaged to the imbecile son (Vennela Kishore) of political heavy weight (Kota) and she would do anything to avoid the impending disaster. Dad commissioner sees a looser in Raja and prefers the imbecile for reasons that are obvious. Raja’s dad is seemingly running a vegetable retail outlet but is financing all the fanciful requests of his son. The commissioner agrees to Priya marrying Raja provided he carries out a plan of his to nab the kidnappers. Our protagonist evolves from the useless guy to a winner in a script that makes its cinematic twists with ease. After wasting time in establishing the love story for the first half, the director pushes through the story in the second half and ties up the loose ends with facile explanations. Given the limited cast it is not difficult to guess who the masked guys are – the only point of interest is why they are doing it. The reasons are too flimsy and cinematic and leave too many loose ends.

Who is also responsible for the story, screenplay and dialogues surely has bitten more than he can chew. The music (Ghibran) is a tad too loud. Of the cast, Sampath Raj and Kota come up with the usual subdued performances. We have Ali making a brief trademark appearance. Adivi Sesh who plays the role of a double crossing police inspector seems very sincere and focused. Vidyullekha Raman adds verve. Seerat the debutant heroine needs to get over her Preity Zinta hangover and do some acting too. The film truly belongs to Sharwanand. He is very sincere and makes an obvious effort to make best use of the opportunity at hand. Especially in the lighter moments he shows great promise. As the central character he justifies a script built around him — kudos for the effort and for being capable of translating the inane into the watchable.