Although Sekhar Kammula commented that the story and idea of ‘Leader’ was years old, but may be the present political system’s biasing made him compulsive to attempt the movie at this particular point of time. Many people in Andhra Pradesh and that too majority from coastal Andhra region follow the regular political updates in the state as their daily routine.
Few of these politics lovers from the region shared an opinion that, it might be a sharp coincidence that death of YSR and popping up of the idea about replacing YSR by his son YS Jaganmohan Reddy in the position as a Chief Minister is well picked up by Sekhar Kammula to start the first scenes in his movie ‘Leader’. Later, he well managed the political drama and the power game which even goes to the level of buying independent MLA’s and coalition party MLA’s.
It was a byte of crude reality for every viewer in the theatre that few scenes in first half of ‘Leader’ have resembled the worst face of present age politics. Arjun Prasad (Rana) buys the MLA’s to get back to power and that too a bit unconvincingly, many doubted that when the story of ‘Leader’ is seeded from the death of YSR, why not YS Jagan has followed the same technique which was used by Rana in the movie?
Can the same formula be implemented in real time? If not, then why is a director like Sekhar Kammula who always thrives for reality in his movies has based too much on political drama this time? No answers…may be even at Sekhar Kammula too.