Veera Bhoga Vasantha Rayalu – Movie Review

What’s it about!
A boy comes to police station to lodge complaint that his house is not there when he reached home. The house and his parents are missing. How can a house vanish in thin air? S.I (Sudheer Babu) commences investigation. Around the same time, it is reported that a plane that left from Colombo is missing or hijacked. Two officers (Nara Rohit and Shriya) start to investigate the case and soon come in contact with the hijacker (Sree Vishnu). How are these two incidents related? Who is Veera Bhoga Vasantha Rayalu?

Analysis

According Pothuluri Veerabramam’s (a Nostradamus on Telugu land) prophesy,  he will be born as king Veera Bhoga Vasantha Rayalu in future to save the world. A guy named Nikhil takes this name as he is killing all the people who have committed ghastly crimes like abducting children, abusing kids sexually and indulging in acid attacks and making the society free of evil people. Is he a vigilante like Shankar’s Aparachitudu? To some extent, yes!

In Shankar’s film, the protagonist suffers from ‘multiple personality disorder’ though he’s vigilante. Here we have totally different twist for the character of ‘Veera Bhoga Vasantha Royalu’ that appears in the final scenes.

The film written and directed by newcomer Indrasena R begins on interesting manner. It glues us to the screens as three missing episodes (a plane, a house and a kid from orphanage) are established. The director maintains the interest with these three different threads in the first half, though the plane-hijack episodes are poorly executed. In particularly, Sudheer Babu’s case and Shashank’s thread are engaging. The shootout at interval bang is also good. By and large, the first half is quite engaging. 

By interval, the audiences know who this ‘Veera Bhoga Vasantha Rayalu’ (played by Sree Vishnu with a different getup) is. Even after the interval, we get to see Shriya and Nara Rohit dealing with Sree Vishnu regarding releasing of hostages. These extended scenes make the proceedings tiresome as the film is clearly not about the hijack. The central point is something else. The director withholds the real twist to make us invest in the second half. When it is unravelled, we feel confused and disappointed. The twist is so forcible and also is unconvincing (we cannot discuss it in detail here about twist as it spoils).

The film begins on promising note but ends in a cluttered way.

It also has shoddy production values. In the first half many scenes are nothing but the footage that is available on Youtube (Visuals of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 that had gone missing are taken). On TV screen, breaking news appears and the Telugu text goes like this: Vimanam Hizag aindi. Such poor standards!

And the investigation proceedings are shot in even clumsier and sillier way. The team that works for Nara Rohit look like they are working for a start-up software company in Ameerpet. Clearly, the director has only acquired knowledge of Hollywood movies than real knowhow of the functioning of Indian IB system.

Coming to performances, Sudheer Babu gets meatier role. Though he has not dubbed the voice, his role and performance is good. Nara Rohit has poor characterisation. Shriya as IB officer suits her role well. In the title role, Sree Vishnu has gone for complete makeover – beefed body, tattoos, etc. He gives his best. Shashank in a brief role is impressive. Sreenivasa Reddy comedy is okay. Ravi Prakash makes his presence felt.

The film’s technical and production values are below par. None of the technicians have made any impact. As writer and director, Indrasena shows that he has ideas but he falters on narration.

Bottom-line: ‘Veera Bhoga Vasantha Royalu’ begins on a promising and interesting note but soon becomes a pretentious attempt. The climax is confusing and vague. The final portions have undone all the interest it has generated in the first half.