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Home > Articles > One Soldier. Battles Galore One Soldier. Battles Galore Laksh | December 03, 2006 Predict the box-office fate of Sainikudu  Prince Mahesh Babu's latest Sainikudu is a mishmash of the worst kind, replete with hackneyed scenes, dialogues, monologues, situations, fights, songs and special EFXs.Interestingly the prized talent of Indian Cinema adds their might to this mishmash. The who's who list include Trisha, Prakash Raj, Irfan Khan, Paruchuri brothers, Peter Hein, Harris Jayraj..and the gang leaders-Aswani Dutt and Gunasekhar. Well, getting all these big names to work together is a history of sorts. But, the movie itself might be in danger of becoming a history-a thing of past-at the box-office pretty soon. Coming back to the mishmash. How could you possibly make mishmash worse? Sainikudu seems to offer a step-by-step guide by mounting every borrowed aspect of cinema on a huge canvass. Let it be a simple scene where the friends discuss their next move against a sprawling city skyline or when the heroine fancies herself with a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon act in a thick jungle-both are set in enviable surroundings. And, you know what? Both these scenes are digitally touched to international standards. Now, if the producer-director duo has taken such a 'meticulous care' with simple scenes would they desert the all-important songs and action sequences? Nope! They summon dolphins in the clouds and make fishes swim in the air in a dream song. And they spread the battlefield of their Sainikudu with mines and bridges-both ready to get blasted. In the midst of all though, they forgot some minor details like getting an original score from Harris Jayraj or providing some rationale for the hero to perform the rescue acts in the battlefield or alteast clarify on the geography. This leaves the star Mahesh Babu and his character in the movie hanging in the air, rather literally. In the end, though he effortlessly comes victorious as a video-game warrior on screen, he makes us wonder if there are any battles off screen. Here are a few of them.  For starters, he is up against a weak script. The word script is almost a misnomer in the cinema these days, so let's call it a thread around a central idea that joins all those myriad of scenes, action sequences, songs and loads of special EFX. And that's hard to find in the movie. Right from the beginning of the movie the hero is hurled into every possible danger and he comes unscathed almost like a Bhakta Prahlada amidst weak representation of the Hiranyakashyapa, Lord Vishnu and Prahlada's devotion.Drawing parallels to Sainikudu, Irfan Khan/Prakash Raj, Hero's mission and Hero's angst/his desire are not etched out properly. If this is not enough, you have a very unusual love quadrangle between Irfan Khan, Trisha, Mahesh Babu and Mahesh Babu's mission. So, every time he gets into fight, or engages in a duel with Irfan Khan/Trisha the normal cinegoers heave a sigh, while the nicotine friendly/bladder weak take a stroll into the park. Second, he battles cinegoer's 'Hey-we-have-seen-it-somewhere' and 'Hey-where-is-Mahesh's-trademark-stuff' syndromes. A dozen movies like Aparichutudu, Rang De Basanti, Yuva, Okkadu, etc., form the first syndrome. Recent blockbusters like Athadu and Pokiri result in the second. And Sainikudu does not succeed in getting rid of these syndromes through out the movie. When it comes to first syndrome it goes overboard and with the second, it falls short. Third, he faces the mother of all battles-ala Frankenstein-the hype that's been unleashed by the makers. Right from the audio launch the movie grabbed news headlines and as a result the expectations soared. Now how could anyone match the expectations of people who haven't sampled the product yet? This becomes a Herculean mission even for a broad shouldered, successful star like Mahesh Babu. The makers should have taken some inspiration from UTV's Web 2.0 kind of marketing style of Rang De Basanti that encouraged and involved target community participation. UTV first let the community lap up the film and then made them talk, rather than resort to a broadcast to everyone kind. Sadly, Sainikudu's makers adopt the second. This once again alludes to a weak script and the central idea going for a toss. While the box-office fate of Sainikudu has not emerged yet, one thing seems certain. Prince Mahesh Babu has to overcome a roadblock or two before he is crowned as the King of Tollywood. And there are a zillion of cinegoers who want to seen him as the King soon. Other Articles By Laksh: |