The moment of truth for director
Sujeeth has finally arrived. After making innumerable short-films, he ventures
into a full length feature for a bigger screen and a larger audience with his
flick Run Raja Run. He effortlessly tries to dish out an RGV-esque cool
crime comedy, and at places even outsmarts him. This is a test for audience’s
intelligence, which the film-maker tries to poke at regular intervals. And
movies like these are a film critic’s delight.
Run Raja Run adopts a
divisional screenplay and both the plots run on parallel lines till the
interval. This type of narration sparks off your thinking faculty to draw some
imaginative lines connecting the dots. With your predictions you try to get
closer to the reality on screen and rack your brains as how both the tracks
merge? However, in this film many such guesses take a U-turn. One track is a
romantic comedy involving Raja (Sharwanand) and Priya (Seerath Kapoor) and the
other revolves around a series of kidnaps in the town and commissioner of
police Dilip Kumar’s (Sampath) constant efforts to bring the criminals to book.
The beauty of the narrative
technique is that the road taken at the beginning branches out into a different
terrain. The twists are perfectly peppered all through the film and those
popping out during the interval and the pre-climax stage keep you on the edge. The
film stands as an experiment to bring world cinema closer home in terms of
storytelling and patching up different subplots that culminate into an
emotional and expect-the-unexpected kind of climax. Don’t mistake it with a
Venkat Prabhu film, where the jokes come first and the plot much later.
Sharwanad gets a complete
makeover and surprises everyone with his great performance. He combines his
innocence from Amma Cheppindi with street smartness from Ko Ante
Koti. What a fine actor he is. Seerat Kapoor is like a whiff of fresh air
and glitters with a radiant smile and twinkle in her eye. Sampath wears a comic
tinge on his rugged cop avatar and stands out with a near perfect act. Adivi Sesh pulls off his role with poise.
Director Sujeeth climbs up many
notches to make a quality caper film with a thrilling screenplay, witty
dialogue, adept camerawork, well-choreographed dance numbers, stellar
performances, and refreshing background score and music. Fortunately for him
they all come out as aces. Madhie’s cinematography is excellent in the way he
frames his romantic sequences and the manner in which he uses his camera to
travel around in frantic situations. Ghibran’s music is an integral part of the
film and it blends into the narration elevating key scenes. This composer is a
bundle of talent traversing across different sounds and tracks.
Going with Sujeeth’s past outings
as a short-film maker, Run Raja Run is more hilarious than expected.
First half is an entertaining marathon. The momentum dips a little in the
second half, where you also find few loose ends, but the fun and emotions are carried well. The final showdown and
emotional block stands as a high point. Though at places the film looks like a
bag of borrowings, it transcends many genre conventions and evolves as an
uncanny thriller with a right concoction of situational comedy, romance, drama
sans the physical confrontations, which are typical of a commercial Telugu
film.
Run Raja Run is fun and frolic meets flair and flamboyance.
This review was originally written for Metro India newspaper.
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