Pradeep Ranganathan-Ashwath Marimuth's Dragon is relasing in Telugu as Return of The Dragon on 21 Feb 2025. The film's youthful elements is appealing to all and let us see whether the film connected chords with the movie lovers.
Return of The Dragon story is all about a youngster who shuns his sincere ways to become a rebel to woo girls and the consequences he faces due to his change of attitude.
Raghavan (Pradeep Ranganathan), rechristines himself as Dragon after some events in his life and manages to make beautiful girl Keerthi (Anupama Parameswaran) fall in love for him. However Keerthi decides to part ways with him unable to digest his carefree attitude and Dragon takes a game changing decision.
How his decision affects his life and what changes it brings, how he deals with him, how it is connected to the girl Pallavi (Kayadu Lohar) to whom he was engaged, his parents Dhanapal (George Maryan), Chitra (Indumathy Manikandan), his boss Venu (Gautham Menon) form the crux of the story.
Sneha as a doctor (cameo appearance) Ashwath Marimuthu as a stranger (cameo appearance) Attributed to the film.
Pradeep Ranganathan connects chords with everyone with his swag and body language. The way he changes his innocent ways to the rebel ways is shown in a subtle manner. He delivered dialogues with ease and he elevated the scenes with his mannerisms,screenpresence. He showed good emotions and expressions bringing variations as a rebel, sincere lover and as a youngster who goes all out to attain status in the society and at the same time, showcase his love towards his parents.
Anupama Parameswaran looked gorgeous on the screen and came up with cute expressions. She played an important role in the film and made her presence felt. Kayadu Lohar is good on the screen and this time, she indulged in glamor treat in few scenes. She did not get much scope to show her acting talent.
Gautham Menon is good as the CEO of the company while George Maryan came up with powerful emotions as the father. His scenes with Dhanush especially during the climax touches hearts. Indumathy Manikandan is good in the role of his mother. Sneha and Ashwath Marimuthu played the cameos while Mysskyn played an important role. Others did justice to their roles helping the story to move forward.
Return of The Dragon story is penned by Ashwath Marimuthu and Pradeep Ranganathan is youthful and entertaining. Ashwath Marimuthu showed how the protagonist undergoes change in personality quite effectively before showing the after effects of it in an interesting manner. The narration and story moves smoothly and screenplay is paced in a perfect manner. He showed how the protagonist goes allout to achieve his goals to prove a point to his ex. The first half ends in a decent way with the lead to the second half.
The second half however gets impacted with few routine and silly elements and this inturn drags the film. However before the pre climax, the narration generates interest and it reaches the peaks during the pre climax and climax and these scenes are elevated with impactful performances from all the actors. Ashwath Marimuthu emerged successful in notonly entertaining genex movie lovers but also drive home a strong message to them about the ill affects of indulging in fraud and lies.
A little fine-tuning of the script and doing away with the mundane elements would have helped the final output to become more polished.
The music of Leon James is youthful and foottapping. The songs are shot in the colorful manner in the backdrop of extravagantly erected sets. Leon James did justice with his background music helping the narration to move forward in a seamless manner taking viewers along with him into the story.
Cinematography of Nikesh Bommireddy beautified the film and turned the film visually appealing. The scenes came out beautifully on the screen. Editing of Pradeep E Raghav is good and could have been better especially in the second half. Dialogues are emotional, entertaining and at times, message oriented. Production values are good.
Altogether, Return of The Dragon is a youthful entertainer highlighting the father son bonding and also subtle message to the society. Pradeep Ranganathan came up with impressive performance in the role which has layers of variations while Ashwath Marimuthu managed to entertain genex movie lovers with youthful elements and also drove home the point that lies will haunt people at one or the other time in life and to stay away from them and honesty is the best policy. Story is entertaining and Screenplay turned out to be racy and little fine-tuning in the second half would have added more spice to the narration. Considering all these elements, Cinejosh goes with a 2.5 rating for Return of The Dragon.