Story

Shivamani (Nagarjuna) is a honest cop in Vizag. He falls in love with Vasantha (Asin), a beautiful lady who aspires to become a singer. There is a mafia guy called Dutt (Prakash Raj), whom Shivamani troubles a lot. Incidentally Vasantha is distantly related to Dutt and both of them belongs to Kerala. In the meantime, Shivamani's mother (Sangeeta) gets paralyzed. Shivamani and Vasantha take her to Kerala to get the treatment of Kerala's Ayurveda specialists. In the process, Dutt gets back to Kerala and he is on the mission to weaken Shivamani by getting Vasantha away from him. The rest of the story is all about how he gets back Vasantha with the help of a newspaper's editor Pallavi (Rakshita).

Artists Performance

Nagarjuna: Nagarjuna played the role of a charming cop. He looks extremely sensible and handsome in the first half. Nagarjuna has the unique lovable quality. People would love to see him teasingly dominating the heroine in a romantic way (like Seenu character dominating Pandu in Ninne Pelladatha, Karthik dominating Padmavathi in Santosham and Abhiram teasing Maheswari in Manmadhudu film). Puri Jagan's mark of aggressive hero characterization suited well for Nagarjuna in the first half and Nagarjuna mixed his sensibility to it in the first half.

Asin: Asin is extremely good as a tender and beautiful lover of Nagarjuna. She is very cute. He got good scope to display histrionics in the second half. She was shown in a deglamourized way in towards the climax of the film.

Rakshita: She played the role of chief editor of Andhya Jyothi daily magazine, who investigates Shivamani's flashback and the love story. She is chirpy and naughty in this film. However, her role becomes clean and neat and the climax approached.

Others: Prakash Raj played the main villain role. He is good, as usual. But there is no force for the villain role in the second half, as he keeps on running away and hiding from the hero all the time though he ruthlessly kills everybody else . Ali's comedy is extremely hilarious in the first half. MS Narayana's comedy is good in the second half. Vinod Bala did a noticeable character in this film. Sangeeta is fair as mother of hero. Brahmaji continued his long mustache in this film too. However, he is missing from villain's gang in the entire second half. AVS played a supportive role to Rakshita.

Technical Departments:

Story: Shivamani film is basically a love story. But the scheme of message in a bottle found by a newspaper editor and how she solves the mystery by placing all the cards in the place is very interesting. Since this film deals a newspaper editor investigating a story, Shivamani is told in a series of 4 flashbacks. One big flashback in the first half and remaining 3 small flashbacks in the second half.

Screenplay - direction: Puri Jagan kept his style of different narration and aggressive characterization in tact. His handling of flashback of the first half is extremely good and it's a top class act. However, his direction in the second half become little insensible with the story meandering between the flashbacks. He made the villain character running away from hero and hiding in an unknown place in the entire second half. By making villain very weak in second half, the director diluted the strength of the hero as hero does not have any powerful villain to fight with.

Dialogues: Dialogues by Kona Venkat are good and sensible. There is good amount of humor thrown in the first half without losing the seriousness and purpose of the film. Kona Venkat seems to be turning out to be one of the finest humor dialogue writers in Tollywood.

Music: Music by Chakri is good. All the melodies in the film gelled well with the narration of the story. Rakshita's solo song is also pretty good. The best song in the film are 'Rama Rama bit' and 'Yenatiki' songs. Chakri improved a lot in terms of rerecording and background music in this film.

Other departments: Camerawork by Shyam K Naidu is good. However, in a few places the lighting scheme is inconsistent. Stunts by Vijay are impressive. Art work by Chinna is OK..

Analysis: First half of the film is very good. Especially the love track and Shivamani episode that comes in the flashback. But the second half of the film is little boring. The classes and masses would definitely like the first half. The film's success would depend on how masses and family crowds take the second half. Puri Jagan has pulled off an average film ANOTA to a big hit. Now, we have to wait and see if the history repeats again for this film too. You can watch this film for Nagarjuna and the cool flashback episode of the first half.

Trade Talk: The talk of the film is divided between average to above average depending on the center with a trade prediction of minimum of 50-days run.

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