Rakht Charithra - Vivek proposes, Suriya disposes
Part I review
Certain Ram Gopal Varma films can be stomached while others are just ridiculous beyond belief. Thankfully, this falls into the maverick’s speciality: Political bloodshed.
Based off the politics between Partiala Ravi (assasinated in 2005) and Maddeluvchervu Suri, Part I focusses on the rise of Ravi while Part II, depicts his fall. Obviously I’m not going to talk about Suriya’s role in this review, that will be later. Instead, I’ll focus on the pros and cons of RC-1. What worked and what didn’t.
The Narration. Commenters from several sites slammed the narrator for sounding too haunted and sounding like a haunted story teller. To me, those comments were downright silly. This isn’t a Karan Johar film where SRK narrates some shit or banters with the fourth wall about Love and the playfulness of the story’s setting. This is a docu-fiction. Yes, I’m using the word docu-fiction for the lack of a better term. Agreed, certain scenes that were meant to speak for itself were rather spoken for. It’s a minor blemish more or less.
The violence. Really? Bashing the violence? Where the hell were they when Ghajini released? Varma knows what’s bearable and what’s within limits. Either man up and watch it or don’t. Go watch shit movies like Break Ke Baad, I Hate Luv Stories or Dabanng (now that had alot of “stylized” violence!) I’ve seen worse in Hollywood movies.
The acting. It’s a Vivek Oberoi show from frame 1. Clearly the man is back in form after giving back-to-back duds.He gets the gist of Pratap Ravi sufficiently and shows tremendous growth from aam aadmi to politician. Kota Srinivasa Rao as Nagmani Reddy is effective. Shatrurangan Sinha is very good as minister, Shivaji Rao (NTR’s character) though he gets limited scope. But the man of the match is Abhimanyu Singh (Bukka Reddy.) He’s really good as Nagmani’s terrorizing son! There's a preview for part 2 in which Suriya's character is briefly shown during Ravi's tenture in poltics.
The cons. Post interval portions are kinda slacking due to excessive slow motion in some scenes.
Final say? Rakht Charitra I deserves a watch for it’s blood thirsty tale! RGV is back!
Part I Rating: 3.5/5
Part II review
RGV has made Part 2 a huge STEP ABOVE part 1 as it gives a grand background of Surya Reddy’s past (his perspective of the family massacred in Part 1 via Pratap Ravi & his path to destroying Ravi due to a misunderstanding. How Suriya completes his masterplan is the crux of the film. The climax is again open-ended with Varma hinting a third chapter. [As of this post, Suri in real life died months after Part 2 was released.]
Yes it could be termed as a slow paced masala but unlike Tamil films, there’s a reason behind Surya’s meticulous planning to assassinate Pratap Ravi. In fact his Hindi diction (debut film of Suriya) is very good for a film based on the blood battles in Andhra Pradesh. Unlike other films say Anjaana Anjaani or Robot, you actually get a story & top notch acting from the likes of Vivek Oberoi, Suriya, Kota Srinivas, Priyamani, etc. Even the ACP (Sudeep) had a greater part in this installment than part 1.
Rakht Charitra 2 gets 3.8 out of 5 stars. Loose editing (the dragging recap [first 30 min] of part 1) & the camera work could’ve been easily avoided. But easily RGV's best.
Part 2 Rating: 3.8/5
Overall Rating for the Rakht Charitra saga: 3.7/5