Movie: Bham Bholenath
Rating: 2/5
Banner: R C C Entertainments
Cast: Navdeep, Naveen Chandra, Pooja, Pradeep, Praveen, Posani Krishna Murali and Others
Music: Sai Karthik
Editor: Praveen Poodi
Cinematography: Bharani K Dharan
Producer: Rajesh Varma
Story, Screenplay, Dialogues and Direction: Karthik Varma
Release Date: Feb 27th, 2015
Bham Bholenath… in my heart... all the lead characters sing this popular Bob Marley’s line at one point in the film. So, you have drugs, theft, chase sequences and romance thrown together in Karthik Varma Dandu’s debut film. But for any small budget film, the trick is to keep the audiences interested till the very end. Now, let’s see if Karthik Varma manages to do that:
Story:
The film starts off with Krishna (Naveen Chandra), a wannabe don and his friend Praveen (Praveen) going to Seth (Posani Krishna Murali) and trying to sell off a rare African diamond that they just steal from a customer at a jewellery store. Simultaneously, a jobless software professional Vivek (Navadeep) and his friend try to break open the ATM to take Rs 2 lakhs so that Vivek can bribe his way to get a secure job. As there is an IT Raid, Seth gives the money to Krishna and asks to get lost. Meanwhile, even as Vivek approaches the ATM, a bag loaded with dollar notes falls at his feet.
From here on, the story become a cat and mouse chase game.
Artistes’ Performances:
Like many short films these days, the film has an ensemble cast of many small-time actors. Probably, Posani Krishna Murali might be the biggest star among the cast apart from Prudhvi.
There is Navadeep, Naveen Chandra, Praveen, popular anchor Pradeep Machikonda, Kireeti, Pooja Jhaveri who plays Navadeep’s love interest Sri Lakshmi, Prachi and Shreya. Pankaj Kesari plays the music loving comic villain Vasool Raja.
Since it a small budget film, all of them more or less make up do justice to their roles within the given framework.
Technical Excellence:
Camera work is by Bharani and music is by Sai Karthik. There is nothing much to write about, but they all do decent work in keeping with the scope of the film. Of course, the editing could have been crispier. It would have helped as it would have made the movie tighter.
Karthik Varma makes his debut with the film and calls his film a thriller. Of course, while he makes a film that is clean, it is too simple to keep the audiences glued.
Highlights:
- Concept
Drawbacks:
- Screenplay
- Comedy
- Climax
Analysis:
The industry is seeing a surge in the number of debutant directors. At least one film of a debutant director is releasing every week as many assistant directors and new aspirants are trying their luck at the box office.
Definitely such attempts are laudable. Karthik Varma is one such debutant director who tries his luck with Bhum Bholenath. At the outset, like all films targeted at the new-age, urban audiences, it has a plot where three parallel stories come together towards the end.
It has very believable characters which could have been picked off real life. And that is the core strength of Karthik Varma. The way his characters behave is very true given their situation and circumstances in life. His recreation of Rocky (Pradeep) and Rahul’s (Kireeti) den clearly shows that he did do his bit of homework.
But that is where the good news ends. While any newcomer must be appreciated for taking the risk, Bhum Bholenath is a rather amateurish attempt at film-making. In an age and time when people are not only watching at least one Telugu release per week and a whole of international films, his film is more like a class project of senior school students.
The story itself is wafer thin and you can more or less predict what is going to happen from the word go. Then, his handling of the plot and wrapping it up in an ‘all is well’ manner is a major drawback for Bhum Bholenath.
For example, four main characters in the film are drug addicts. Probably, Karthik Varma wanted to make a film on the lines of Hollywood flicks where drug addiction and heist episodes are shown without being judgmental. But if that was his mission, he should have worked on his screenplay and plot.
Instead, he tells rather simple story in a very convenient manner making it tiresome in the process. There are no thrills and neither is the film very entertaining as it comes without any gags.
All in all, it is an effort at film-making and while Karthik Varma seems to have set out with good intention, he falls flat when it comes to telling a gripping story.
Bottomline: Nothing exciting
(Venkat can be reached [email protected] or https://twitter.com/greatandhranews)
