Operation Duryodhana Review

Dialogues are the forte of Posani Krishnamurali. The debut film of this writer-turned-director was a flop. However, the urge in him to prove himself a director did not die. Posani has a penchant to criticise the political leaders. So, he chose a story with political backdrop. It may be recalled here that Tehelka succeeded in unearthing a huge scam involving the political leaders in the name of 'Operation Duryodhana'.

As the film coming out with a satire political system by giving a call for the society, 'It is people who were responsible for the maladies of political system and they need to be cleansed rather than criticising the politics and political leaders.'

Surprisingly, almost all the Telugu film directors are in the habit of showing the police as corrupt and puppets to the political leaders and their henchmen, Posani Krishnamurali highlighted the value of police and upheld the dignity of police, the real government servants.

Mahesh (Srikant) is a sincere circle inspector. He has a nice living with his wife (Kalyani), two daughters and a son. Being a sincere officer he used to get transfers frequently. Once a farmer dies of electrocution and Mahesh arrests the MLA (Viswender Reddy) and his henchmen. As a result, the MLA was forced to quit politics. In a revenge, he hatches a plan and get the entire family, including the children of Mahesh, killed.

However, Mahesh and his wife survive. Mahesh decides to teach a lesson to the politicians responsible for the death of his kin. He changes his attire and changes his name as Bhagavantudu. With the help of Ruchi (Mumaith Khan), he gets the ruling party ticket for elections and gets elected as an MLA. Acting like a true politician he ignites ire among people.

In the process, he also gets the police insulted and creates a situation where ACP Rangaiah Naidu (Nagendra Babu), yet another honest police officer and his team, get humiliated. In protest, Rangaiah Naidu, in the capacity of the president of the Police Officers Association calls for resignation of entire police force. As the entire police administration collapses, traffic goes haywire and the people suffer serious problems from goons and gangsters. Unable to deal with the situation the Chief Minister appeals to Rangaiah Naidu to withdraw the stir and assures no political interference in police administration.

In the climax Bhagavantudu takes revenge against the MLA and eliminates all those who were responsible for his kin's death. Chief Minister pats Bhagavantudu for educating public on the political system. Achieving everything what he wanted to do Mahesh pleads with the CM to give him back his CI job and the film ends with Bhagavanthudu turning back as Mahesh.

Srikanth's excelled in a role with two shades - as a police officer and also as politician. He really lived in the character.

Nagendrababu, Prabhakar and Jackie did justice to their roles and their characterisation was another highlight of the movie. Though there is a heroine and family for the hero, there were no songs between the duo, but for a couple of interesting romantic scenes in the form of dialogues.

Kalyani appeared as a guest artiste rather than a heroine. It is the gripping screenplay by Posani Krishnamurali which is another major highlight. It was tremendous in the first half. However, he lost grip here and there in the second half, of course, for the sake of movement of the story.

Yet another highlight of the film is dialogues. Though a little lengthy in some scenes, they made the audiences to rethink about what the character is saying. The satires made on the division of State (separate Telangana, Rayalaseema and Andhra movements) were hilarious.

The major let down in the film is climax. The dir