Violent films have very few takers but we cannot ignore the two-hour story of Dandupaleyam that revolves around rape, bestiality and murder of more than 80 people in Karnataka. Director Srinivas Raju takes into account only facts and alerts people to think twice when strangers come knocking on your doors asking for water. The modus operandi is mostly the same, a woman does recce by observing each home, the people living there, the number of times they walk in and out of the house and strike when the time is right. Dogs are fed with buns mixed with sedative or poison. The film begins with Inspector Chalapati (Ravi Shankar) subjecting the gang to the third degree torture to confess and what follows is a series of incidents that first show a happy family followed immediately by the attack of the gang. By showing the culprits already in jail and then narrating how they meticulously execute their assignments there is predictability and repetition writ all over the screen, then what is that the audience has to sit through and wait for?
The auteur eliminates all the commercial aspects and concentrates only on the lifestyle, their food habits, their thinking and their motives and also highlights the unholy nexus between lawyers and criminals. We are troubled by the Delhi gang rape that shook the nation but listen to the unapologetic confession by the criminals that have all been unaccounted in the climax, that makes us recoil in horror. The director suggests that he is coming up with the next part soon but isn’t this enough to draw the attention of the law makers, the judiciary and the populace in general? What we need is a solution, not dramatisation of gory events in sequels.
Pooja Gandhi’s effortless performance is the highlight of the story. Makarand Deshpande is being spoken about but we don’t see him articulate much, as the job is done by his quiet demeanour and a mammoth unkempt hair. The film would have looked complete provided the director gave us an insight into their origin, reason behind the gang behaving in a particular way, even at the cost of the story looking like a documentary. Over all it is a well-made film technically but one would still wonder if the subject though universal still has a title and content pertaining to Karnataka, would interest the people in Andhra Pradesh. Good effort by Srinivas Raju who succeeds in drawing attention through his first film which is dubbed from Kannada.
Dandupaleyam
Cast:Pooja Gandhi, Makarand Deshpande, Jai Dev
Direction:Srinivas Raju
Music:Arjuna Janya
Genre:Crime
Plot:A heinous story of a 11-member murderous gang in Karnataka
Bottomline:This is not for the chicken-hearted.