Rangam Review

KV Anand, the director of this movie earlier worked as photo journalist. He penned a subject keeping his experience in mind, besides mixing some commercial elements and moulded on the celluloid. Basically, the film is a mixture of some real life incidents with politics and extremism in its backdrop. The director handpicked artistes, keeping the story in mind, to suit each of the character and everyone gave their best making the film interesting.

Story

Aswat (Jiiva) is a photo-journalist. He finds some masked men coming out of a bank and captures the photographs. He later finds that they looted a bank. His photographs help the police to nab the culprits in very less time. Vasant (Ajmal) was of the opinion that young blood should enter politics to work with principles rather than senior and corrupt politicians. He launches a party called Navataram and plans to contest the elections. Aswat was his friend in college days and plans to promote him indirectly and hence exposes the present chief minister (Prakash Raj) and the opposition leader (Kota Srinivasa Rao), with the help of his co-journalist Renuka (Karthika). Karthika loses her heart to Aswat. Another colleague called Saru (Piya Bajpai) also loves him, but Aswat throws weight on Renuka. While Vasant addressing a public meeting, Aswat gets an SMS from Saru that there is a bomb beneath the dais. Aswat wants to save Vasant and pulls him down. During the blast, several friends of Aswat, who studied with them in the college and joined hands with Vasant die. In the same blast Saru also dies. After elections Vasant's party gains majority and he becomes the Chief Minister. However, a video footage of co-journalist who died in the blast shows t/hat Saru did not die due to blast or in the stampede but she was killed by someone. Aswat finds that the killer is one among those who were involved in the bank robbery. In another photograph, Aswat finds the same person with Vasant. Who killed Saru? What is the connection between Vasant and the murder? Did Vasant himself plan the blast to gain sympathy? What was the reaction of Aswat for the brutal murder of Saru? What kind of punishment Vasant gets? What made Vasant to plan all the drama? Answers to all these questions form part of the climax.

Performance

Jeeva is impressive as photo journalist and he did his job extremely well. He carried the entire film on his shoulders and proved that he could deliver great performance by living in the character perfectly. Karthika, who made her debut through a Telugu film 'Josh' opposite Naga Chaitanya, once again came up before the Telugu audiences through this dubbed version of a Tamil film and proved that she too could perform extremely well if the characterisation was good. Piya Bajpai, who played another key role in the film did her character with ease as a mischievous girl. Her performance touches the hearts of audiences and her sacrifice is supreme. Kota Srinivasa Rao and Prakash Raj are in their usual best. Ajmal played a negative role in the movie and he too did justice to his role.

Clapworthy moments

Jeeva's performance all through the film is impressive. The hero's introduction, his daredevil act in capturing the images of the bank robbers were shot in a perfect manner. The twists in the story, the way the heroine question the hero about why he was promoting the new party and why he is trying to work against the present government were shot in an intelligent manner. Richard M Nathan's cinematography is the highlight of the film. He maintained perfect lighting and captured the action scenes perfectly on the screen. All the songs were screened very impressively. Next comes the music by Harris Jayaraj. All the songs in the film are melodious and impressive. Background music had also elevated many scenes. In fact, the second half of the film was more impressive with several twists than the first half. The screenplay of the film was very tight. the twists and tight screenplay in the second half arrested the audiences to their seats till the end. The climax too is very impressive.

Cringeworthy moments

Editing by Anthony is okay but he should have shortened the boring scenes in the first half. In fact, the second half was more impressive with several twists, but the first half was not crisp and gives a feel of little lengthy. Though the director lost grip for some time in the first half, he recovered after the interval bang. The death of the second heroine should have been avoided, but the film gets the important twist there forcing the director to sacrifice her role. The love between the heroine and hero was also not properly established to some extent.

Released on: 13th May, 2011