'Raagala 24 Gantallo' hit the screens today.  Here we present the review of the so-called suspense thriller.  

Story:

Three criminals, serving a jail term for murder, are on the run.  They enter the house of ad filmmaker Rahul (Satyadev) and Vidya (Eesha Rebba), who are a married couple.  Much to their shock, the criminals find that Rahul has been murdered by Vidya.  On her part, Vidya is trying to hide her husband's death.  

This is when she starts narrating her story to the criminals.  Rahul was a perverted husband who suspected that Vidya had an affair with Ganesh (Ganesh Venkatraman), her college friend.  

The rest of the story is about what transpired between the husband-wife duo, how the criminals are tied to their story, and what role a cop (played by Srikanth) has in all this.

Analysis:

Some films don't take too long to reveal their brains (or the lack of a brain).  This one takes just 30 minutes to display its mediocrity.  Rahul, who is India's living legend (a character uses the word legendary to describe the ad filmmaker for real), refuses the proposal of a rich lady.  If he marries her, he will be one of the richest persons in India.  The Mahatma tells the unfortunate rich lady, "I am looking not for a woman who loves me.  I want to find the one I will love."  How come such a man, who doesn't mind kicking the proposal of an ultra-rich woman, turns out to be a cold-blooded criminal who will go to any extent to save himself from financial troubles while making miserable the life of his beloved? The film doesn't do a proper character study.  

Eesha plays an orphan (once Satyadev's character was shown as a Mahatma waiting for the best woman on the planet, I knew his pair will be either an orphan or a poor farmer's daughter) and she agrees to marry the ad filmmaker 30 minutes after rejecting him.  In short, the male lead rejects one of the richest ladies, but the female lead is so easy to be won over by a man who stalked her just a while ago.  

It's not clear what ails Satyadev's character.  Is he too greedy?  Or is he a pervert needing of psychiatric help?  Has he always been a criminal?  He is obsessed with his camera, so much so, he shoots his sex acts with Vidya with his 'third eye' (read camera).  Far from engaging you and making you empathize with Eesha's character, the scenes are in-your-face and voyeuristic.  The husband constantly referring to his wife as property reeks of old-fashioned story-telling. This is not to say that such men don't exist (in fact, there are plenty of them whose thinking is regressive), but the telling should have been imaginative.  

The film throws up characters randomly and they don't serve a cogent purpose.  Comedian Krishna Bhagawan plays the heroine's creepy neighbour who speaks lines like this: 'Akrama sambandham, avakai biryani bhale untayi'.  

While some scenes are too lengthy, the film doesn't seem to have an emotional anchor.  This is because Eesha's character goes missing from the screen for a good part.  And it's also because her woes don't touch you either because of the plastic atmospherics or her lacklustre performance or both.

Satyadev kills it with his mature performance.  He surprises you in a negative role. Others, especially Ganesh and Srikanth, are quite apt.  Care should have been taken to get Musskan Sethi's dubbing right.

Raghu Kunche's background music clicks.  The cinematography delivers goods despite budgetary constraints.

Verdict:

'Raagala 24 Gantallo' loses steam despite a reasonably good start.  The emotional core is missing.