Pistha Review

It has to underlined that Pista has given warm welcome for Vishal in tollywood with good openings.

A man from village goes to city in search of his brother who escapes from home many years ago. He gets caught up between thugs and in the meantime also gets caught up in love. Whether he locates his brother or not, let us go and see.

Story

Murali Krishna (vishal) is an obedient son and he wants to make his mother (Geeta) happy at any cost. The reason for her sadness is the absence of her other son who runs away from home during childhood and Murali decides to locate his brother at any cost and get him back to her so that they can be one happy family again. Hailing from the remote Ramachandrapuram village, Murali is quite rugged and tough. He now reaches Vizag city and begins his search, in this process he chances upon Indu (Shriya) and as expected, she falls in love with him. On the other hand, he also gets muddled up with two local goondas Surya Prakash (Prakashraj) and Guru (kishore) who are out to get him now. Whether Murali Krishna is successful in locating his brother or not forms the rest of the story.

Performances

Vishal has come up with his regular act and there is nothing new about it, he also needs to work on the serious sequences carefully as his dialogue delivery looks frail. Kishore looked effective while Prakashraj was the regular impact creator. Geetha was there for the sentiment, Ali did his bit for the comedy and Krishna Bhagawan failed to impress. Tanikella Bharani's role was miniscule and it is nothing given his caliber. The saving grace of the film is Shriya who has generously oozed out her oomph and created a visual feast for the viewers. Sayaji did his bit and made his presence felt.

The others did not have much to do in this.

Technical aspects

The script has been written without much flaws but not much depth is there in it. The screenplay was average and music has failed to impress. Cinematography was effective and captured few moments very well. Costumes were neat and the art department worked a lot in the songs and few settings. The dialogues were flimsy and the comedy track was not that special. Stunt sequences were upto the mark. Editing was necessary at few points but there is nothing much in the content that actually requires to be condensed.

Director's portrayal

The director came up with a wafer thin plot and expected to churn out a hit, there was nothing different from a regular formula movie and though the technical aspects were good support, he could not conceive a good idea and the narrative was not upto the mark. He also failed to extract good performances and focused more on the presentation than getting out some quality from the artistes and also handling the script deftly.

Critic's view

For those who have seen Vishal's earlier movies, there is not much difference they can make out with this one with respect to its storyline and the style of presentation. The difference is, since this is a bilingual, Vishal and team took care not to get the Tamil flavor in between and was successful. However, while the first half goes about with the routine comedy, fight, drama things it is only the second half where the plot really builds up but in no time, the climax has nothing different to offer and all know what is going to come next. If Vishal is looking at proving his mettle (which he has) he must look at taking risks in terms of content and variety. Else, despite his big budgets, he wont be able to get much. This film will run solely on the glamour show of Shriya and it could appeal to the mass audience, it would also take some heavy publicity and positive word of mouth if the film has to click at the box office.

Verdict

Same old story, nothing tasty about it except Shriya. Since the openings are good there are bright rays of hope at box office. We have to see how far the hopes come true.

Release date: 29/05/2009