Movie: Ratha Charithram
Cast: Suriya, Vivek Oberoi, Priyamani, Shatrughan Sinha
The much awaited “Ratha Charithram” by Ram Gopal Varma is a typical yet deft vengeance drama with some stunning performances and abominable violence.
Story
“Ratha Charithram” is another violence-filled vendetta drama and is all about the life of Pratap Ravi (Vivek Oberoi) and Suri (Suriya) who live their life off the edge with vengeance creeping into their lives and mind in a struggle to survive. The first 30 minutes of the entire movie is a recap of its first saga which deals with rise of Pratap Ravi and the latter is about how Suri punishes Ravi. The opening credits and the violence juggernaut begin to roll coevally and hit the end with a usual hero-kills-villain climax.
The good
The protagonist and the antagonist characters are the ones which keep us entertained throughout the movie since both are extremely powerful, equally poised and bear a great scope to perform. Fortunately, the actors, Vivek Oberoi and Suriya have done justice to it and do live up to expectations. Suriya with his angry glare and stunning sinews keeps us enthralled throughout the movie.
The bad
Everything apart from the two lead characters is very uninteresting; especially the supporting characters. This story has quite a lot of characters and they all, invariably, have much less to convey. Most of them are very brief and, in fact, you would hardly remember them by the end. In fact, RGV has spent a lot of time in introducing all the characters rather than letting at least a few register their screen presence. The roles played by Kota Srinivasa Rao, Priyamani and Subhaleka Sudhakar stand testimony to the fact.
The ugly
Commendable effort by the cinematographer Amol Rathod in capturing the South Indian milieu, but the circular and slow motion camera along with very frequent tight close up shots sometimes irritates and hence fails to keep us intrigued by the story. The jarring background, inter alia, the unabashed show of violence add insult to the injury. Except for the typical RGV style violent stunt sequences and tight close ups, it has nothing so path-breaking as it promises.
Bottomline: “Ratha Charithram” by RGV is just another political vendetta drama with stunning performances by Suriya and Vivek. But weak hearts please stay away from this one.
KARTHIKEYAN, 23 years, working in TCS, Chennai
