Murder Mysteries are curiosity generating plots in any film industry. Venkatapuram falls into the same genre starring Rahul of Happy Days fame and fresher Mahima Makhwani as heroine in debutant Venu Madikanti direction. After an exciting round of promotions, let us get into the actual Venkatapuram Review?
Chaitra (Mahima Makhwani) is a college going girl shifted to Vizag with family. Influenced by the age and college friendship factors, Chaitra falls in love with simple living and honest pizza delivery boy Anand (Rahul) living in same apartments. On an unfortunate day when Chaitra and her friends visit a remote place in Bheemili beach, their lives change once for all and are struck in deep trouble. Rahul tries to rescue Chaitra from the problem but gets caught by police (Ajay Ghosh) and is served 9 months jail punishment. What happened in Bheemili beach on that particular day? Why Rahul is on a killing spree? How specially appointed police officer Ajay Varma (Ajay) cracked the case is rest.
To keep it crisp, Venkatapuram is a short story centered on occurrence of an ill fated event one day at Bheemili beach and how it affected hero, heroine’s love life. It’s the screenplay from Venu Madikanti stretched into a 110 minutes film hiding the suspense till last moment keeping enthusiasm levels up and down made Venkatapuram a praise worthy experimental thriller. With a thin storyline involving only one central conflict point, Venu’s direction took sort of a melancholy tone by itself. The area where lot many twists, turns and surprises are expected, direction gets meek slowing down the pace of proceedings. Yet, second half is grippingly executed bringing stability. Writing could have been much better. Sai Prakash cinematography is more than decent for a film with meager production cost. Madhu’s editing missed spark in first half while second half is razor sharp. Achu composed couple of melodies and background score is really good. Production standards from Shreyas Sriniwaas and Good Cinema Group are above satisfactory levels.
Onto performances, Rahul got a character away from Happy Days Tyson touch. His dialogue delivery substantially improved and so is his six packed abs put to use in a fight sequence. He emoted well connecting the audience with pain and disturbance in his love life. Fresh face Mahima Makhwani is more realistic in look and does a good job. Ajay Ghosh is cruel and Ajay is very brief. Among the rest, Kasi Vishwanath and others just did their parts.
Rahul
Thrilling Screenplay
Music
Second Half
First Half
Love Track
Boredom In Parts
Film making became competitively easy these days with new generation technicians and artists working hard on designing concept based scripts involving low budgets and acceptable technicalities. Venkatapuram is adequately an all right project in this area for little of content and more of treatment went into the narrative by Venu Madikanti. Accepted that film is leisurely chronicled between a limited set of events yet the way suspense factor is concealed till the climax is impressive.
Introducing audience to Bheemili criminals in very first frame, Venu began his cheater screenplay keeping audience hooked to one side of transgression. Immediately onto Rahul at Bheemili beach, two threads are suspiciously opened with Police Inspector Ajay Ghosh into interrogation. From here on story shifts to flashback and pace fell down drastically with humdrum love track and college scenes aren’t perforating. Its interval but the gap needed to establish the core point is still left unfilled.
Into second half, Venu changed gears and the thrilling ride unfolded hidden layers one by one. Rahul into action mode at police station and bloodshed thereof are dealt grippingly. Trap laid for Rahul by Special Officer Ajay is one more weak link before audience are thrown to untangling actual thrill at Bheemili. Climax is though on expected lines, it is defensible for a film of this scale.
Venkatapuram is not a bad film in comparison to downhearted and dejected movies releasing every week. With limited artists, technical resources and a shoe string budget, this concept based flick may leave an impact for inundate central point. Cinejosh gives Venkatapuram rating at 2.5 stars.