Pooja Movie Review

Behind the Movie Pooja: Actor Vishal is talented and best suited for plenty of action filled characterizations. He fell in right hands of Director Hari with this flick. Shruti Hasan adds for glam quotient and Yuvan Shankar Raja’s music is always an asset. Let us see, what is ‘Pooja’ all about?

In the Movie Pooja: Story takes off with introduction to money lender Singanna Patrudu (Mukesh Tiwari) doing illegal business of contract killing in and around Bobbili, Vizag areas. In the same contour of Gnyana Puram, there is a daring and dashing youngster Vasu aka Srinivas (Vishal), also a money lender living in Vegetable market. He falls in love with Divya (Shruti Hasan), daughter of businessman (Pratap Pothan). 

Situations turn up in such a way that Vasu has to beat the followers of Singanna to save ADCP Shivaram Nayak (Sathya Raj) from a well sketched murder map. Around the same time, Vasu’s tiny family flashback is disclosed and he is the only son of Late Gokaraju (Late Raghuvaran), the prince of a huge business empire controlled by widow mother Rajya Lakshmi (Radhika) and her family members. 

During a land dispute, Rajya Lakshmi’s family also comes in combat with Singanna and the only way left out is to field Vasu against cruel opposition. Who is Singanna and what is his connection with Patna? Was Vasu able to save his family members from Singanna? How Shivaram Nayak helped Vasu in the process is rest.

Values of the Movie Pooja: The basic dominance in director Hari movies is a skill full scripting with super fast narration. Never does he let tempo to fall down. Hari challenges audience with an opened lock predictability without teasing the brains. ‘Singham’ (Two Parts) or ‘Aaru’ is a tactical show of Hari’s brilliance. However, Hari showed his mark only in bits and pieces for ‘Pooja.’ Story has a typical premise of strong hero with a big family, beautiful lover, a comedian group, a robust villain and a helping police officer. This is enough to arrange a typical action mass masala flick. Hari puts in whole lot of commercial elements into ‘Pooja’ but fails to sustain in catching the pulse and excitement of audience. Interval block is a trademark specialist treatment of Hari and from there on he misses to give death punches at frequent intervals. Priyan’s camera work is decent while editing by Vijayan, Jai was blunt in most. Kanal Kannan’s stunt composition is new helping Vishal to remain in full flow. Yuvan’s music is absolutely disappointing and Vennelakanti’s writing is also weak. Production values of Vishal Film Factory are top notch.

On performance front, Vishal was genuine towards the character. Both as a producer and actor, he has done complete justice. In couple of songs and deadly action sequences, Vishal was outstanding. Romantic thread with Shruti Hasan was feeble. Shruti was here just for name sake to add oomph oozing skin show. Mukesh Tiwari is a weak villain who even flattened the heroism elevation in Vishal. Although Mukesh Tiwari known as excellent performer with films like ‘Ganga Jal’ etc, he did not get a meaty characterization. Radhika was over reacting while Soori’s comedy was laughable at parts. Among the rest Jayaprakash, Sitara, Abhinaya, Kausalya, Pratap Pothan, Manobala etc were purely of Aravam flavor.          

Out of the Movie Pooja: Unlike past hits, Hari failed to show his master class action thriller touch here. Packed with overdose of commercial ingredients, Hari could not mix them in proper portions. One does not understand why Soori’s comedy was dominating Vishal’s heroism at times. Music is yet again a biog drawback. Hari played a see-saw with audience transferring narration significance between action and romance missing the coherence. Except interval block, I could not sense Hari’s genius touch else where yet running the story at lightening pace retained the brand of Hari to some extent. All in all, ‘Pooja’ is not as quality product like ‘Singham.’ The solidarity in story and punch in execution as seen in ‘Singham’ was misplaced in ‘Pooja.’

For front benchers and lower class audience, there are favorable movements to grab on. For metro and urban ideology viewers, ‘Pooja’ is total over-action or say Arava Paithyam. Commercially, ‘Pooja’ can do better business in B and C centers relative to other areas. 

Cinejosh Verdict of Pooja: This Is Not ‘Singham.’

                                                         Cinejosh Rating: 2.5/5

                                                                                      Reviewed by Srivaas