Or, another one bites the dust.Chandra Sekhar Yeleti was, to me, the Golden Boy of Telugu cinema. Along with Sekhar Kammula, he looked like one of the few who bring a semblance of sanity to Telugu movies, with good plotting and realistic direction. Aithe was a great story, and although it had flaws (I didn't think it was polished enough and hated the poorly spoken Telugu, and the acting was lacklustre), I thought it pointed to good things ahead. Then I saw Anukokunda Oka Roju, and I was sold on Yeleti. That movie was so perfect I could hardly find a flaw with it.
So it was that I looked forward to watching Okkadunnadu with a great deal of interest. I was hoping for something that was an improvement on Aithe, or even (though unlikely) on Anukokunda Oka Roju. When the movie first started, I thought I'd hit the mother lode. The first 30 minutes or so are excellent, with a tightly told explanation of the story's basic premises and central problem. Having set me up with expectations of a blissful couple of hours, Yeleti then proceeded to demolish all of my hopes.
The first signs of trouble started with the Matrix-inspired wire-fu sequences when Kiran (Gopichand's character) escapes from the hospital. Soon, he was single-handedly wiping a hospital drug-storage godown with 40+ goons. (When he hits a goon, the goon flies and lands a minimum of 20 feet away.) That could've stopped there, and the movie might still have been good - but that was not to be. Kiran solves all the problems he faces in this movie in this most direct fashion - by wire-fu-ing unbelievable hordes of thugs. There's nothing else to the movie. The rest of the story is this: Kiran single-handedly bashes up Bombay's most notorious don's entire gang. He does so without any guile, either; simply walks into their midst and beats them all to a pulp.
What's so sad about all of this is that Yeleti obviously has the ability to direct great movies. Perhaps it was the lukewarm box-office performance of his earlier films that prompted him to turn this potentially good movie into a no-holds-barred masala hotchpotch. It's really too bad.
In short: stop watching this movie after the first 30 minutes. You'll be left burning with curiosity, but perhaps unslaked curiosity is better than what you'll see if you keep watching!
