Taraka Ratna from Nandamuri clan is unable to come out of the flop streaks and after a long gap he is coming to entertain movie lovers with his film S5 No Exit. His first look increased interest among movie lovers. The film also stars Prince and is directed by Bharat Komalapati. The film's OTT partner is yet to be finalised and it will be done at a later date. The film is releasing on 30 December 2022. Let us see what S5 No Exit offered to viewers.
S5 No Exit is all about the happening in the S5 compartment in an express train heading to Visakhapatnam from Secunderabad. Subbu (Tarakaratna) along with his friends heads to Visakhapatnam from Secundrabad in an express train. His father, top politician Subramaniam Naidu (Sai Kumar) ensures that his son celebrates his birthday on a train in such a way that he books the entire compartment and makes all arrangements that the train stops only at three stops en route to Visakhapatnam. However, Sunny (Prince) along with his dance group by mistake boards his compartment. Even as they promise to get down at the next stop, shocking incidents happen in the compartment. To find out those shocking incidents, the reason behind them, and how TC Sambasiva (Ali), and Suleman Khan (Sunil) are connected to it, form the rest of the story.
Tarakratna tried a different look in the film. His look and intensity generate interest and increase curiosity. However, as the film progresses, he gets faded. There is nothing much for him to perform but just to sport a serious look. He did not have enough dialogues also till the climax. He ended up just being a caricature on the screen. Prince is ok in his role but his role is unidimensional. He also sported a serious look but got few dialogues.
Sai Kumar got an important role but it turned out to be inconsequential. All the three, Tarakratna, Prince and Sai Kumar turned loud in their dialogue delivery irritating the viewers. Ali entertained to some extent with his comedy and big boss spoof while Sunil also made his presence felt to some extent. Others like Suresh Varma, Mehboob, Avanthika, Ruthuja, Raghu, Sanjay, Gabbar Singh Batch, Ramana Reddy, and Fish Venkat tried to make an impact but got limited roles on the screen.
S5 No Exit story selected by Bharat Komalapati is a horror thriller. He tried to attract viewers by thrilling them with the happenings on a train. He starts the narration in a routine manner but once the happenings on the train started, viewers get glued to the strange things. Bharat Komalapati kept the interest intact in the train sequences for most of the part but just ahead of the interval block he diluted it with the comedy scenes involving Ali and others. Had he maintained the same thriller and horror tempo, the result would have been different. However, the end of the first half, makes viewers wait for the second half to take to another level.
But into the second half, routine elements creep in and this evaporates the thrill factor and also the interest levels coming down completely with the entry of Sunil. The graph falls down drastically in the pre-climax and then the happenings in the climax, instead of surprising and thrilling viewers, make them think that the makers have fooled them with silly content. Manisharma made an impact with his background music. His background music elevated the scenes. Garudavega Anji's cinematography is quite good. He used camera angles and colors to get the desired impact most of the time. Dialogues are just ok but could have been better. BH. Garry's editing is ok but could have been better especially in the second half. Production values of Saaga Entertainment are Ok.
Altogether, S5 No Exit teaser and trailer generated interest and Bharat Komalapati started off on the right note. He came up with an interesting line but failed in his execution. In the narration, Bharat seems to have been confused as to what viewers will like, whether political thriller, the horror genre, or hilarious comedy, and in the end made a fool of himself and also the viewers. In the end, everything looked silly and he failed with his screenplay and direction. He came up with illogical scenes, lacked real twists and turns and ended up irritating the viewers. On a whole, S5 No Exit turns out to be silly to the core. Considering all these elements, Cinejosh goes with a 1.5 Rating for S5-No Exit.