Film: Amaravathi
Rating: 2.5/5
Banner: Bhavya Creations
Cast: Ravi Babu, Nandamuri Tarakaratna, Bhumika, Sneha, Sindoora, Raghava, Subhashini, Kota, Paruchuri Gopalakrishna, Kasi Viswanath and others
Music: Sekhar Chandra
Fights: Kanal Kannan
Editing: Shankar
Cinematography: Sudhakar Reddy
Director: Ravi Babu
Producer: V Anand Prasad
Release date: 03/12/2009
Ravi Babu is slowly creating a brand for himself with his different approach towards film making. He has now arrived with ‘Amaravathi’ and how chilling and thrilling it has been, let us see.
Story:
The emergency help line 108 gets a call that a nine month pregnant woman’s life is in danger. By the time the staff reaches there, the baby is taken away by cutting the stomach. This is done by a psychopath (tarakaratna). Such things repeat so the special task force gets Venkat (Ravi Babu) to investigate. He manages to catch the killer but then even when the interrogation is going on, similar incidents happen outside. How does that happen? How does Venkat solve the case? All this forms the rest of the story.
Performances:
Tarakaratna:
His face was covered with a mask so that his expressions need not be seen, as long as it was seen, he was showing few blank expressions and did an okay job.
Ravi Babu
As a cop, he did his job. Since he has already proved himself as a director and an actor, he has done justice to his bit.
Sneha
As Ravi Babu’s wife, she has done okay job. Her romantic scene with Ravi Babu gathered a good response from the audience.
Sindoora
As Ravi Babu’s colleague, she looked sleek and stylish. Apart from toting the gun, there was not much she could do in terms of expression or performance. There was not even that much scope for her.
Bhumika
She is as usual, sometimes as a mad girl, sometimes in a graceful manner, her role was very limited.
Others
Kota, Paruchuri, Kasi Viswanadh, Subhashini did their bit as required and added value to the film.
Technical crew
As his previous movies, Ravi Babu has taken ‘Amaravathi’ in a very high quality technical standard. Though he has taken the movie from the start to the end in a gripping manner, fifteen minutes after the interval tends to give an idle time to the audience. After that, he has kept them engaged completely and here and there, he also mixed comedy and showed his sense of humor.
For a thriller movie, background score and cinematography are two very key aspects so both departments did very well. The cinematography gave a mood to the audience while the background score had enough punch and shock moment in it. The dialogues were weak, the screenplay was alright, costumes were hyped, art department was creative, editing was nice but it could have been crisp during the first half.
Analysis
The film ‘Anasuya’ showed heart, kidneys, eyes and other organs being taken away by a psychopath (Ravi Babu) and in ‘Amaravathi’ Tarakaratna came in the role of a baby lifter by cutting the stomach of the pregnant women. But then, the subject of hypnotism, the way it was used for the film and the twists that were deployed using this gave a new feel. The flip side of the coin is some unusually silly things. For instance –
Sneha ‘runs’ to open the door when the bell rings, this when she is 9 months pregnant
The special task force outfit and the office set up, cars, it was obviously a copy of the SWAT teams in the US, how absurd can that be? That could have been realistic
A fat and flabby guy like Raghava goes to catch the psychopath in the climax, is that the fitness levels of the special task force?
The film will appeal to those who like Ravi Babu movies or thriller genre of films. But if you compare it with ‘Anasuya’ then there is disappointment in store for you.
-Reviewed by Anand Kanchi ([email protected])
