Story

Munna (Prabhas) is an orphan who grows up in an orphanage and studies with the help of scholarships. Kakha (Prakash Raj) is the mafia don in the city. Munna's fight with Kakha's son in the college leads to confrontation between Munna and Kakha. Munna becomes 'Mr. dependable' to the locals and starts building his empire to help people whereas Kakha tries to eliminate him. The rest of the story is all about how Munna defeats Kakha.

Artists Performance

Prabhas: Prabhas is pretty good in the role of Munna. He might not look so appealing in the stills and posters, but is good on the screen with his new hair-do. He is using similar kind of dialogue delivery in almost all situations. He should try to modulate his voice as per the scene and emotions. His height and body structure brings believability to the fights he has done.

Ileana: There is a dialogue in the film in which a side character refers to Ileana's figure as 'front super. Back bumper'. That suits her pretty well. She is very good in this film. But unfortunately her role is limited to songs in the second half. She shares good on-screen chemistry with Prabhas.

Others: Kota is excellent as noble politician. Prakash Raj is very good as the main villain. Rahul Dev is competent in a vital role. Venu (Jai fame) has a very important role in this film and his comedy is good. Sridhar, Tanikella Bharani and Posani Krishna Murali are adequate. Heroine Kalyani did an insignificant role in this film. Shriya sizzled in an item song. Venu Madhav is okay.

Technical Departments:

Story - screenplay - direction: The story of this film has slight resemblance to the Hindi film Trishool. The story and the basic plot have lot of commercial potentiality. But the execution of the film could not translate that potentiality onto the screen. A better screenplay should have helped the film. Debutant director Vamsi Paidipally's work is good in parts. He executed a few vital scenes very well. But he could not maintain compactness in his narration. He gave unnecessary build-ups of hero oriented scenes again and again. For example, there is no need to use freeze camera technique on the kid, when he puts knife on a man. The following scene impressed me -

In the climax fight Prakash Raj gets hold of a gun and points it at Prabhas. And obviously that gun had no bullets. Hence we all come to know about it in due time. But the director inserted an episode in between in which he remembers a gun seller telling technical details about the gun followed by hero recollecting the number of shots and then realizing that the bullets are over. By inserting this scene, the director elevated the heroism through hero's intelligence.

The scene how hero finds the connection between two vital people in the film is also executed well.

Other departments: The music by Harris Jayaraj definitely falls short of our expectations. The songs should have been better. The picturization makes it up for that through Manasa and Vastava Vastava songs. Cinematography by Ram Prasad is very good. It is beautifully supported by the Digital Intermediate and visual effects done by Prime Focus. There are innumerable fights in this film. The most impressive one is the rain fight. Peter Hynes exploited the body language of Prabhas to the full extent in that fight. Dialogues in the film are well written. Editing is alright. Production values by Dil Raju are grand.

Analysis: The movie starts off on a dull note and meanders aimlessly till the dark secret is revealed before interval. The flashback episode is unappealing. There are a couple of surprises in the second half. The plus points of the film are Prabhas, stylish taking of the director and lavish budget. On the flip side, screenplay and narration should have been better. There is no holistic perspective in the film. Let us wait and see if Dil Raju's 'Midas Touch' works for this film or not!

Munna links
• Audio review
• Music launch
• Muhurat
• Photo gallery
• Working stills
• Wallpapers
• Press meet
• Trailers
• USA | Aus

Jeevi reviews of previous 5 films
• AMAV
• Classmates
• Dhee
• Athili Sathibabu
• Jagadam
• Okkadunnadu
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