Film: Basanti
Rating: 2.5/5
Banner: Startcamera Pictures
Cast: Goutham, Alisha, Ranadheer, Sayaji Shinde, Tanikella Bharani, Naveena and others
Music: Mani Sharma
Cinematographers: Anil Bandari, P K Varma
Editor: Marthand K Venkatesh
Director: Chaitanya Dantuluri
Producers: Chaitanya Dantuluri, Uma
Release date: 28/02/2014
Brahmanandam’s son Goutham attempted twice to become a hero but it didn’t work. This time he has teamed up with Chaitanya Dantuluri who made the critically acclaimed ‘Baanam’. Let us see if this attempt is successful.
Story
Arjun (Goutham) is a college student and he falls in love with Roshni (Alisha) at first sight. During the college farewell party arrangements, a group of terrorists enter the campus and take the students as hostage. Among them is Abbas (Ranadheer), Arjun’s close friend. During that incident, Arjun is not present in the campus. But he eventually enters the premises risking his life. Why does he do that? What happens to the hostage crisis? All this forms the rest.
Performances
Goutham has shown improvement compared to his past films. But there is still a lot of scope for betterment. At some places he was quite casual and blank but he did well in one emotional scene.
Alisha was disappointing. While she has cute looks her body language and expressions were not that convincing. Added to that, her dialogues were quite artificial.
Sayaji Shinde was effective and added weight to the film. Even Tanikella Bharani impressed with his brief but strong presence. Ranadheer gave a committed performance and he deserves more opportunities so that his talent can be explored. The actor who did the role of villain was alright.
Highlights
- Background music
- Cinematography
Drawbacks
- Screenplay
- Climax
Analysis
The theme of the film revolves around how an ordinary man reacts and revolts in an extraordinary situation. But the director gave an ordinary solution. Many who live in the city are aware of terrorism and its effects.
It is also known how the terrorists are trained and hardcore when it comes to killing people.
Given that situation, an ordinary college student fighting against a big group of terrorists and ending them was rather amateur.
The subject itself is quite realistic but if it is given a cinematic ending then the purpose fails. The director should have focused on bringing it closer to reality and develop the rationality aspect.
Secondly, most of the characters do their job mechanically as if they are remote controlled. The situations must be dealt with high emotional voltage but everyone is casual and the seriousness is totally missing in the scenes. Here again, the director has failed as a writer and giving depth to the script and screenplay.
For instance, the villain shown as a very intelligent man who solves the rubic cube and a chemical engineer but the way he tries to deal with a situation when a college student escapes is silly.
The first half of the film doesnt really have any steam because the romance was not having the juice.
The second half had few promising moments and the death of Ranadheer was the only worthy sequence. The climax ended up in a stale and unconvincing manner.
Overall, as an attempt the film must be apreicated but it is hard to appreciate the way the film took off and landed.
Bottomline: Good effort but poor result
(Venkat can be reached at [email protected] or https://twitter.com/greatandhranews)
