Daruvu (2012)

Lord Yama (Satyanarayana) wants to retire from his job and appoints his son, Yuva Yama (Prabhu) as the heir to his job. Chitragupta (MS Narayana) too wants to retire but is forced to occupy his post on the insistence of Yuva Yama. Peeved at this, Chitragupta searches for one Telugu man who can teach a lesson to the Yuva Yama and finds Bullet Raja (Raviteja), a ruffian from Chennai to be that man and changes his lifespan.

Bullet Raja is in love with Shweta (Tapsee) who is the fiancée of a dreaded don, Babu (Sushanth). As Chitragupta changed his lifespan, Raja dies in a fight with Babu and reaches Yamalokam. There he finds that his life has been shortened and creates lot of trouble. Unable to bear the burden of Raja, Yama offers him 3 bodies of which Raja has to choose one. Raja chooses the body of Andhra Pradesh's Home Minister, Ravinder (Raviteja) who is a man of loose morals and is about to be killed by his own friends in politics.

Bullet Raja has to now go into the body of Ravinder and bring a reform to his personality and also fulfil his own wishes of previous birth. How he achieves these forms the remaining part of the story.

As always, this is a Raviteja movie which essentially means that there would not be neither logic nor reasoning for the proceedings on screen. All we would be served is the dosage of Raviteja's histronics. "Daruvu" is exactly that. It is high on energy quotient but low on entertainment quotient. Though there are some moments which make you chuckle, the film is a drag.

Director Siva cooked up a story which had its inspirations from various films like, Yamagola, Yamudiki Mogudu, Yamadonga, Indrudu Chandrudu, Sivaji and Vikramarkudu. But the final mix was not to the satisfaction of the viewing audience. There are lot of loopholes in the construction of the story itself which even common audience would find it difficult to comprehend. The story itself starts from Yamalokam where Chitragupta conspires to bring the hero to Yamalokam to create trouble which is the central theme of the film. But the director forgets that central theme and plays with the several sub-plots by making them more important to the progression of the film. In other words, the director forgot the main story and told a different story.

Even if we discount the glaring loopholes like these, the story which is presented does not find any takers as the opposition to the hero in the form of villainy is very feeble. The villains do nothing in the story other than fall victim to the antics of the hero. When the hero has no opposition to vanquish, how can his heroism be established? That single factor keeps Daruvu several notches below the films like, Vikramarkudu which were almost in the similar genre.

Coming to the performances of the lead cast, Raviteja was his usual self which is loud, louder and loudest. There is nothing to describe his performance as he shouts in his high decibel voice rather than deliver the dialogues in an effective way. Oflate Raviteja seems to have forgotten that he is an actor first because whichever the character he is given, he is playing them the same way which is loud, louder, loudest. Though this kind of performance is expected of him, he is becoming very much routine with his expressions, shouts and shrieks. He is a much talented performer than what he is doing presently.

Tapsee looks very beautiful and has been ordered by the director to look shocked in each and every sequence which she diligently follows. The rest of the cast did their job for their pay packets. Raghubabu manages to get some chuckles with his "Dhinka chika" and Brahmanandam could not make the audience laugh this time around. The villainous trio of Sayaji, Sushant do their best to look menacing. Prabhu looked heavy as Yuva Yamaraja and it was refreshing to see Satyanarayana back on screen as Yama. MS Narayana did his best to suit the role of Chitragupta.

The technical departments were okay. The music by Vijay Antony is a major minus with the background score and the songs proving to be an earsore. The cinematography lacked clarity inspite of the fact that the director himself is a noted cinematographer. The look and feel of the film is plain average and the audience have seen better graphical work in the films like Yamadonga and Magadheera. Editor Gowtam Raju should have trimmed the film by at least 30 minutes to cut the boredom from creeping in.

The screen time for the movie is almost 3 hours and to keep the audience rooted to their seats without looking at the watches is a herculean task in which the director, Siva failed. The audience got up to leave at a certain point in the pre-climax expecting the film to be over, but the film still had good 15 minutes of run and the audience reaction at the dragging proceedings is an indicator of how disconnected the audience were.

Daruvu is a film which might still entertain, if one leaves his brains at home, but if you favor those heavy dramas then Daruvu is definitely not for you.