Naga Shaurya is hoping to reach next level with Aswathama for which he penned the story. Mehreen Kaur Pirzada is the leading lady in the action thriller directed by debutante Ramana Teja. Will the film become a memorable one for the three?
Ghana (Naga Shaurya) is a responsible youngster comes all the e way from USA to India to attend his sister’s engagement. Two days ahead of the marriage, Ghana finds his sister about to hang herself. He’s shocked to know that his sister is pregnant, but she doesn’t know the person behind and how it happened. Ghana’s brother-in-law accepts to marriage. Nonetheless, he finds similar case at a hospital when a girl commits suicide after she gets to know that she’s pregnant. The rest of the story is all about Ghana investigating the case and catching the culprit behind it.
Inspired by a true story happened to his friend’s sister, Naga Shaurya penned the story. There’s huge inspiration of Rakshasudu and few other crime thrillers in developing the screenplay. The story can be summed up in a line. It is about hero finding mysterious psycho who is making women in the city pregnant without their knowledge. It is a mammoth task to flesh it out into a good screenplay for this wafer-thin story and very inexperienced Shaurya and his team of writers and director Ramana Teja botched to make it as an engaging thriller. Villain identity is hidden for entire first half and we don’t even sense much of his impact in the period. Then, the second half belongs to villain who takes the driver’s seat until pre-climax followed by weak ending. The brother-sister emotion also looked naïve. Enough of cinematic liberty is taken and action sequences were meant to project Shaurya as action hero.
Manojh Reddy’s cinematography is decent. Sricharan Pakala’s sound tracks are mediocre, wherein BGM by Ghibran elevates the mood of this thriller. Editing is utterly bad. The film needs a lot of trimming. Production values of Ira Creations are good.
Onto artists, Naga Shaurya has played an action-packed role which needed him to perform some risky stunts. He did his job faultlessly. The Bengali actor who played the villain wins the brownie points. He dominates the second half with his atrocities. But, the simple ending somehow disappoints. Mehreen Kaur Pirzada didn’t get enough space or scope. Prince is okay, wherein Satya is wasted completely for a not so important role. The fishing gang played their part.
Naga Shaurya
BGM
Fights
Wafer-Thin Story
Stretched Screenplay
Cinematic Liberty
Lack Of Engaging Elements
Story writing is not an easy job to do. Moved with an incident to his friend’s sister, Naga Shaurya developed the story with fictional elements and characters. Of course, there’s no wrong in it. But, there should be believability in the narration. Naga Shaurya, Ramana Teja and the rest of writing team lacked clarity in presenting the half-baked story.
Movie begins with Pawan Kalyan’s voiceover from Gopala Gopala describing the prominence of Aswathama in Mahabharatham. Then, we are introduced to Naga Shaurya and his family. Enough time is taken to develop the brother-sister bonding. His sister’s suicide attempt episode takes us to the main story. The following episodes of Naga Shaurya’s investigation on the ‘sexual abuse’ on women in the city are highly inspired from Rakshasudu. The lengthy chase and action episode towards intermission was somehow intriguing.
Latter half begins on an interesting note with introduction of villain, a psychopath and a womanizer. The dining table sequence of villain killing his own men was meant to elevate the villainy. But, his cruel acts, however, will not connect to Telugu audience. The open screenplay from here on will not engage us. When the villain and his motive are unveiled so early, no element is left except for hero finding and killing the culprit in the end. The villain’s flashback is also not unique. The movie ends on regular note with Shaurya killing the criminal.
All in all, Aswathama is a passable thriller with some good moments here and there. Naga Shaurya and the one who played the villain impresses big time. Nonetheless, better screenplay would have done wonders. CJ goes with 2.5 stars and we need to wait and see how the film fares at the box office.