Solid: Ravi Teja, Rajisha Vijayan, Nassar, Divyansha Kaushik
Director: Sarath Mandava
I’m undecided what to make of this model of Ravi Teja – the humorless machine that churns out mindless mass movies. It’s not even reaching the stage of “it’s so mindless that it’s satirically wonderful” like with Balakrishna, the place his movies have merged self-deprecating irony with real masala. Whereas Balakrishna tends to overcommit to his half right here, Ravi Teja seems like a lazy rehash of himself from the previous like an meeting line of movies meant to be secure cash spinners. The frustration is two-fold. He’s an actor who’s able to pulling off delicate movies the place he can play extra susceptible males on display screen and in addition inside this framework of masala movies, he lent a freshness to them almost a decade and a half in the past.
Sadly, Rama Rao On Responsibility, whereas being higher than his latest movies, nonetheless doesn’t change into a fantastic or perhaps a good movie.
It tells the story of Ramarao (Ravi Teja), a deputy collector who’s posted as a Mandal Income Officer in Chittoor in 1995. There’s a spate of murders associated to pink sanders and its smuggling, and the story revolves round Ramarao getting his arms soiled and investigating the darkish forces which are concerned within the criminal activity.
Director Sarath Mandava appears oddly confused about learn how to deal with the movie and struggles with seamlessly weaving his imaginative and prescient into Ravi Teja’s picture. There may be quite a lot of analysis that he has accomplished relating to how precisely the smuggling takes place and it’s to his credit score that it by no means feels just like Pushpa: The Rise, regardless of sharing the identical area and place. However his main man’s over-the-top-ness and obligatory requirement of two feminine actors, make them misfits. There may be not one however two poorly written ladies within the movie starring Divyansha Kaushik and Rajisha Vijayan. Their names would possibly as nicely be Proper Hand Lady and Left Hand Lady.
In some unspecified time in the future, the 2 ladies meet and talk about how nice the person who connects them is after which certainly one of them will get to think about a track sequence in Spain. It’s not the outdated half that’s worrisome, however the lack of creativeness to start with. Certain, you need to hark again to a time when songs had been an excuse to showcase some new places to an viewers who would possibly by no means get an opportunity to go to such unique places. Can the places be extra unique then? Can the choreography be newer? Can the music really feel more energizing? Give the viewers one thing.
Someplace buried inside Rama Rao On Responsibility is a Theeran Adhigaaram Ondru-like movie. I’m not saying Sarath Mandava exhibits the identical sort of promise as H Vinoth when it comes to execution, however he clearly has a watch for the world he desires to delve into. If Pushpa in some sense has an amoral understanding of smuggling, Rama Rao On Responsibility has a transparent ethical stance on smuggling. And in that approach, it has clear masala tropes of excellent guys vs dangerous guys at its disposal, however the movie doesn’t rise above making an attempt to valorise its main man. The massy moments ought to have been punctuation marks within the investigative thriller. As a substitute they’re like large potholes that make you would like you by no means got here down this highway within the first place.
However to Sarath Mandava’s credit score, this movie is not less than nearly as good, if not higher than any of Ravi Teja’s latest movies. Upon additional reflection, I don’t assume this movie desires to clear a bar larger than that. For now, the meeting line of Ravi Teja movies has simply gotten yet another addition.