Story

Arjun (Maheshbabu) and Meenakshi (Keerthi Reddy) are twins born to a middle class couple (Muralimohan, Kamala). Right in the college days, their classmate Uday (Raja) deeply loves Meenakshi and expresses it to her almost when they were separating.  Uday then writes a letter to Menakshi from his town in Tamilnandu. Arjun and Meenakshi being twins are intimate and exchange information more like friends. She give the letter to him and Arjun reads out and understands that Uday wants to marry.  His sister too tells him that she too likes his behavior and approach and decided to marry only him. Uday lives in Madurai, to where Arjun travels along with his sister and parents.  First he approaches Uday and tells him that he did not like Uday asking his sister to elope with him. But he understands the reasons later, after seeing the characters of Uday’s parents (Prakashraj and Sarita). 

By the time Arjun reaches the town, Bala (Prakashraj) and his wife are already negotiating with a local rich man (Rajan P.Dev) to get their son married to marry Rajan’s daughter (Keerthi Reddi in guest role) Iswarya.  She tells she is crazy of him.  She is everything for Rajan and tells that he is ready to give away all his property to them worth about Ten crore rupees.

Bala’s wife is such a dare devil that she killed a police officer who came for investigation into the misdeeds of Rajan. And the later requests them to come to his rescue. The rescue act is pushing the police officer down her from her top floor of her multi story building, and declaring it is accident.  The couple also later kills Rajan and thus clears him away from their route to riches and his only daughter Iswarya.

But they are shocked with the arrival and Arjun along with the family members and his announcement that their son is already in love with his sister. Uday too tells his parents that he is bent upon marrying Meenakshi.

The helpless couple get their son married to Meenakshi and plan later to kill her too so that he can go for Iswarya.  But Arjun scents the plan as Bala’s men start attacking with a design to kill him, as they find him a block to their plan. By that time his parents go back to their native place in Andhra, leaving Arjun behind. From this point till the end of the film the screenplay is filled with this single track of narration of how Bala and his men make attempts to kill Arjun and his wife trying her methods to terminate Meenakshi’s life and how Arjun with all grit, determination and fight power invested in him by story writer director, resist these onslaughts and save his sister finally. The story also sends her husband abroad, so as to clear way for his parents to continue playing villainy in Meenakshi’s life.

Performance

Maheshbabu has more of action and less of drama in this subject.  So has freezed his expression into gaze with slightly slanted head, always. You can call it underplaying the role. But for those few scenes he and the girl played his twin sister involving themselves in pranks, there is nothing cognizable worth noticing as family drama.  The dialogue too runs on those lines only.

The college scenes too are shown only to establish that Uday is a close friend of these twins. Sriya joins Mahesh in the later part of the drama run in Tamilnadu. But for some hide and seek game set between them there is nothing to relish romantically. The story line strictly avoided her interference in the life of Arjun, but for in couple of scenes in the end. Romance and humor are totally absent in this film, even for relief sake. As these fight scenes queue up one after the other monotony sets in. The girl who plays Meenakshi (Keerthi Redy) too has nothing to perform, as the character is victim of circumstances. The only scene that we can say she has something to perform is when she throws out her brother from the house, an anti-sentimental act.

Muralimohan’s father’s role is totally ignored.  Prakashraj, Sarita team up well in given limitations of the characters, but they too contribute to the stagnation of the drama, as their objective throughout the film is to run after the brother and sister to kill them. Even the mimicking talents of Kalabhavan Mani are wasted because he is given a crude role, instead of creating one that suits comic villainy. Raja too gets a  name sake role that turns unsympathetic towards the end as he too joins Meenakshi to drive Arjun away from the house heartlessly.The killing of police officer is artificial and is meant only to establish the brutal mind of the woman. Why this story is set in Tamilnadu cannot be explained as this can happen anywhere and there is no advantage of setting it in another state.

One expected a better film from director Gunasekhar.  He would surely have done better had he not woven a bad story line for himself from which he could not wriggle out to give a better treat.  Strong visuals dominate poor narrative. This film being the only release this week will sure gather some momentum before it fretters away.

Analysis

As mentioned above it is a single-track story line, of the villains planning to kill Meenakshi and her twin brother Arjun and the latter paying the villains in the same coin.  But the henchmen of Bala are many and are lead by a crude Mani (Kalabhavan Mani). So the fights gain importance in the show set against Tamilnadu backdrop, the place of action being Madurai.  But for a few lines of expression in Tamil, all-important characters speak in Telugu. The hero of the subject, that way, is Vijayan, who choreographed umpteen fights, making almost all the fighters and Arjun too levitating in the air, even while kicking around. From point of reality we may not digest what they show, but form entertainment point the film enough to thrill mass. There are three or four crowd scenes including the one in the climax part. Those scenes are fantastic, in the sense the filmmakers achieved a yeomen’s task.  Photographic work is brilliant. But the impossibility and the improbability always haunt us.  Like we saw in a couple of films already the technic of flashback is used.  But here the hero stationed on a tree branch, Caught up I muddy waters just murmurs of what all has happened and his guess as to what will happen. The repetition of this scene looks purposeless.  Strength narration without this scene punctuating the drama would have served well. The characters played by Prakashraj and Sarita and the way Arjun is literally thrown out of her house by his sister kills the spirit of sister sentiment. The entire drama in alien land of Tamilnadu sounds as if it is lawless land.  The lady don murders the only policeman who makes his presence in the opening part in Tamilnadu. The climax is stretched beyond reason. 

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Arjun Movie Trailer

Movie Reviewed by Sriram