Narappa vs Asuran: Nakkaki Nakalokaniki?

Venkatesh is known as the king of remakes and he starred in many remakes and scored blockbusters. So when he decided to star in Kollywood hit Asuran remake, people did not find fault. However few eyebrows were raised when Srikant Addala was chosen as the director as he is not known for high octane entertainers and discussions started whether Venkatesh can match the performance of Dhanush who won a national award for his breathtaking performance.

Thanks to the lockdown and coronavirus many already watched Asuran with subtitles and got bowled with the powerful emotions, action scenes, and how the caste angle has been highlighted. For the remake, the makers used the original background music and also the same cuts duly thanking the director Vetrimaaran and also music director GV.Prakash Kumar. This made people question if they have to copy-paste the same content scene by scene, then why rope in Manisharma as the music director and Marthand Venkatesh for the editing. The same is the case with Shyam K Naidu's cinematography.

After watching the film, many felt that Narappa paled in comparison with Asuran. Dhanush showed variations in three roles as an angry young man, a middle-aged man who realized his mistake, and an old man out to save his family. Dhanush with his slim physique looked completely a villager. Venkatesh in the meanwhile looked stylish especially in the flashback with ironed outfits. the romantic track which proved to be the weakling in the original, turned out to be the weakest as Venkatesh looked old opposite Ammu Abhirami.

Apart from it, the makers diluted the caste angle completely. They have done away with the caste dialogues to avoid any controversy. Though they made few slips regarding caste dialogues, their decision to do away with the caste angle came as a shock as many films like Palasa 1978 came with powerful dialogues to make a stunning impact. To the top of it, while the entire cast came with natural performances in the original, the expressions looked artificial and forced. Srikanth Addala also failed to elevate the heroism of Venkatesh though he got an opportunity to do so in the high octane fight during the interval block and also in the climax just sticking to the fight scenes in the original.

Even during the flashback fight,he couldn't elevate the heroism of Venkaesh. All in all, Srikanth Addala though tried to do justice by sticking to the original failed to do full justice to the remake. He failed to elevate the heroism of Venkatesh without improvising duiring the action scenes and also working out on the weaker parts in the original. Thus Srkanth Addala failed to make use of the golden opportunity and his failure resulted in people saying Narappa vs Asuran-Nakkaki Nakalokaniki.