Daggaraga Dooramgaa Review

You must have heard a friend or a relative say that people must be given a chance to lynch terrorists to death on the roads of our cities so that men of their tribe are taught a fitting lesson.  This radical middle-class view that doesn't care for the niceties of the rule of law forms the denouement of Daggaraga Dooramga, a most inappropriately titled film.  Remember A Wednesday?  This film graduates to the next level.  Daggaraga.. is about mob justice at the end.

No, don't think that the movie is an intense drama like the aforementioned Bollywood film.  Far from being intense, it not even earnest. It looks as if the director conjured up a hybrid story by combing one full-fledged second class love story with another half-baked terrorist story to keep the audience glued to their seats.  Poor Chavali Ravikumar ends up cooking up a story that never connects with the lovers of either pop corn films or terrorist flicks.

Gowtham (Sumanth) is a creative ad director who pontificates others to 'think different' but all he is good at doing is morph a new face  by cutting the eyes from the image of one girl and the nose from another and so on. (Like our director?) The produced image turns out to be quite beautiful and the face is used by a cosmetics maker as the model.  However, she looks exactly identical to Meenakshi (Vedika).  Her life takes an unexpected turn when her engagement with a guy is put off after the groom's parents spot the image of the fictitious model in semi-nude form is used by a beer-maker.  She decides to teach the ad company that created the model a lesson and comes to Hyderabad.

As fate would have it, she ends up in a soup along with Gowtham when a piece of Zarina's (Sindhu Tholani) journalistic adventure  - a DVD with footage of terrorists' plans - falls into her hands.  Gowtham and Meenakshi are arrested and are branded terrorists.  The rest of the film is all about how they escape police custody and come out unscathed from the hunting terrorists out to kill them.  Have these got anything to do with the first part of the film.

If the intention of the director was to make Gowtham and Meenakshi meet to take the story forward, why did he take the entire first half to make them cross their paths?  Where does it help the film, especially when the second half happens to be more about their adventurous escape and how the hero defeats the evil designs of jehadis?

Also, what kind of a creative director would not have the common sense to first see what is on the DVD after which are a band of terrorists and think of calling up the police and offer to appear before them along with the DVD to prove their innocence?

As for the performances, Sumanth is routine.  There is nothing to write about others.  Raghu Kunche lives up to the expectations and the title track is hummable.  'Think Different' is good but it is affected by the visuals.  He should work on bettering himself film after film.  Dialogues lack punch.

Post Script:  Here is our title justification.  The film is nearer to the many run-of-the-mill films where a Manmadha Rao lusts models, a sidekick disguises as a model to fool the lecher, and one too many such ridiculous things are played out.  And, yes, it is farther from offering anything interesting.

Released on: 26th Aug, 2011