So then, Ram Gopal Varma is finally back in action with ‘Rakta Charita’. Bollywood fans are perhaps tired of him for giving one dud after another with movies like Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag and Agyaat, but the Telugu audience saw him way back in 1999 when the movie ‘Prema Katha’ was released .
Although this movie is a tri-lingual, it has been eagerly awaited by the Telugu audience since the story Paritala Ravi and Maddelacheruvu Suri is something that many Telugus are familiar with. RGV does not disappoint his fans with the first part of the Rakta Charitra series and thankfully gives his fans something that they expect of him.
Rakta Charitra-1 is the story of Pratap (Vivek Oberoi) whose father and brother are killed by the men of his father’s political mentor, Narasimha Reddy and his aide Nagamani Reddy. Pratap who till then is indifferent to all these fights begins the battle against the killers. He along with other members of his group starts eliminating the men from the rival camp one by one.
Bokka Reddy (Abhimanyu Singh), the son of Nagamani Reddy is hell bent on taking revenge on Pratap. He also creates problems for Shivaji Rao (Shatrughan Sinha), a film actor aspiring to rule the state. Shivaji Rao supports Pratap and gives him the political backing to fight Bokka Reddy. How Pratap grows in stature as a politician and how he uses it to eliminate his arch rival, Bokka Reddy takes us to the end of the story.
Vivek Oberoi delivers an impressive performance as Pratap (real life character of Paritala Ravi). However it is Abhimanyu Singh who hogs the lime light as the evil Bokka Reddy who takes law into his own hands. Shatrughan Sinha offers a good performance as Shivaji and reminds the Telugus of NTR every time he utters the word ‘brother’ in his dialogues.
The rest of the actors are also good but the ‘Telugu feel’ is lacking in the movie with just Kota Srinivas Rao, Tanikella Bharani, Subhalekha Sudhakar being the only Telugu faces in a story that is based on the incidents that have happened in Andhra Pradesh.
Background music by Dharam Sandeep suits the theme of the story but at times you can’t help feeling that it is too loud. The camerawork in the movie has the RGV stamp that his fans are so used to, right from his first movie ‘Siva’. For a change, the fights in a Telugu movie are natural devoid of the drama that we get to witness when the hero thrashes 10 goons in no time.
For a major part of the movie RGV has the audience guessing, trying to relate the characters and incidents in the movie with those that happened in reality. It is this reality aspect that makes the movie gripping and interesting.
As the director himself mentioned earlier, the movie is definitely not for those who enjoy family drama or even those who love regular commercial flicks. There is definitely too much of bloodshed and excessive violence in the movie, but then perhaps there was a reason for RGV naming this movie ‘Rakta Charita’.
So then for a change, I am writing again instead of the comic strips that I have been so addicted to of late. Interestingly enough, the background of this blog is something that I very much associate with RGV movies.
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