Early Tollywood: VISHAL

5.29.2009

Vishal's PISTA (2009) Movie Review by Greatandhra

Film: Pista

Banner: GK Film Corporation

Rating: 2/5

Cast: Vishal, Shriya, Kishore, Prakash Raj, Geetha, Tanikella Bharani, Shayaji Shinde, Ali, Krishna Bhagawan, Srinivas Reddy etc

Lyrics: Ananth Sriram

Dialogues: Shashank Vennelakanti

Action: Rocky Rajesh

Art: Velu-Prakash

Editing: VT Vijayan

Camera: Priyan

Producer: Vikram Krishna

Music: Mani Sharma

Story, Screenplay, Direction: Sabha Ayyappan

Released On: 29th May 2009

The much hyped ‘Pista’ that has been making rounds in big way in media circles has finally released today. Let us see how far the film stood up to expectations

Story:

Murali Krishna (Vishal), rough and tough young man from the village Ramachandrapuram comes to Vizag in search of his elder brother who runs away from home in childhood.

His wish is to make his mother happy by bringing back her elder son. In the process, he happens to develop a tug with two gangsters Guru (Kishore) and Surya Prakash (Prakash Raj).

The typical action drama continues till the last and if Murali Krishna found his brother has to be watched on screen. It is not something special to say that Indu (Shriya) is the lady love for Murali Krishna and there is nothing big to portray for her other than this.

Performances:

Vishal with his rugged look once again portrayed in mass action flick. All his histrionics, the choice of subject, the way he presented himself looked obsolete. His voice base and punch while delivering heavy dialogues are to be improved. Vishal needs to try something new to make a stride. For him the action film/mass flick happens to be just a few fights, songs and heavy packed climax. He has to come out from that shell and try for newness.

Shriya has shown enough of oomph and that worked well on screen.

Prakash Raj is at his best as a gangster. He justified his role. Kishore as another gangster is also ok. Ali’s comedy is good but Krishna Bhagawan failed to spill laughs with his weak track. Tanikella Bharani, the senior artiste with good élan, has diminished himself as a side kick for villain. He wouldn’t have zeroed in on that not-so-prominent role.

Action episodes are also outdated. Music is just average. The film is lacking freshness and the director is solely responsible for that. The production values are good but the subject matter is weak.

Analysis:

It appears to be a dubbed version with first look, watching Vishal on screen, but since it’s bilingual, the nativity is not missed in many frames. All the songs except ‘Pattuko Pattuko…’ were shot with Telugu lyrics and majority of scenes were also canned in Telugu that brought a perfect lip sync of artistes. The padding artistes also brought nativity feel for audiences.

First half of the film runs with time pass scenes and there will be no big movement in story line. The real story begins only with interval twist and second half. The conclusion is as expected and hence the last 15 minutes will not be that exciting for audiences.

The plight of this film depends on the patronage of mass audiences and the posters with glamorous Shriya may help to some extent. The film may run only with artificial boost up and heavy publicity but not with material in it.

5.28.2009

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Vishal romances Shreya....again!!

5.18.2009

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News Of The Day

1.29.2009

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BHAYYA(2007) Lyrics

8.14.2008

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Salute Telugu Movie Review

Film: SALUTE

Rating: 2.5/5

Banner: GK Productions

Cast: Vishal, Nayantara, Upendra, Kota, Ali, Brahmanandam and others

Music: Harris Jayaraj

Cinematography: R D Rajasekhar

Director: Rajasekhar

Producer: Vikram Krishna

Released Date: August 14, 2008

Story:

A regular cop story, the movie begins with Sathyam (Vishal) who is a tough cop and an honest one too. He is an ACP and believes that law and order must be maintained at all times, however he is more of a peace lover and strongly believes that anyone who has done something wrong can be taken to task under the purview of justice and book of law without using any special methods. This also makes him feel repulsive about the encounter methods.

However things take a turn when a well known politician (Kota) wants to get on to the chair of the Chief Minister and in this process, he hires a contract killer and gives him a list of names that have to be killed. However, he has a shock of his life when he gets news from the killer that someone else is already on the job without his involvement. Sathyam is given the assignment of nabbing the culprit and finally he manages to arrest Prathap (Upendra) who ironically is an ex cop himself but then he does not believe in the law system since he gets betrayed professionally. The ideology clash between Sathyam and Pratap goes to a peak and then the hero decides to put an end to this by proving his point. Is he successful in his mission? What is the link between Divya (Nayantara) the crime reporter and him? All this forms the rest of the story.

Presentation:

The director has come up with a wafer thin plot and though his presentation was good, the narration lost out big time and it turned out to be pathetic. The dialogues are stale, the script is feeble, the screenplay has not been executed perfectly. The saving grace for the movie is the above average music with some soulful tunes and the cinematography was eye catching. The costumes department was decent and the frontline sectors failed miserably.

Vishal is impressive in his new muscular look and looked like the perfect cop guess that's one reason why he looked stiff at few scenes, Nayan on the other hand was oozing out glamour in the songs but then she was totally decked up during the movie so her role is actually negligible. Upendra did his bit to give an anti hero feeling but his role was not well etched, Kota did a brilliant performance while the comedy track between Ali and Brahmanandam looked silly. The others did not have much scope to perform so they are not in the list.

Conclusion:

It was a well thought out idea to bring about two cops with different perceptions but then enough fuel needs to be filled to bring out the intensity in characters which was missing completely. While the first half goes about in the regular dull mode without much to offer, a twist comes before the interval which rises expectations but then the second half also turned out to be a disappointment as nothing much was there in it. The inclusion of songs at wrong situations was another disturbance which really irked the audience. It is very hard for the movie to live up to the hype created but it might just make its money given the steamy song USP and the presence of Vishal and Nayan.