Saaho

This film is so complex in its stupidity that at some point you fear for your brains dimming a bit, if you try too hard to understand what Saaho is really about. Well, don't fret much. Here's a quick primer: There's a black-box that grants one access to Rs 2 lac crore in cash, presumably stored in a bank. It belongs to a dead Mafia kingpin.

Saaho is a big film. But its bigness is all bulk, not heft. Writer-director Sujeeth's film is peripatetic, lurching from one geographic location and terrain to another. And though it's ambitious in wanting to sound, seem and pose like it's a significant something, it is slow and heavy-footed in demeanour, and puerile of mind. Worse, it has no soul.

The head of a crime syndicate in Waaji City, Roy has a dream of legitimizing his business. He arrives in Mumbai after a long time to do so but is assassinated. The city sees a spate of robberies and they are linked to the crores that Roy was supposed to bring to India. Ashok Chakravarthy (Prabhas) is assigned to solve the case but is he really a cop. After a rather convoluted narration and some jaw-dropping action sequences, the truth is unraveled.

Saaho starts with the promise of a slick, high-octane actioner. Impossibly high sky-scrapers, all gilt-edged. A bunch of extremely international baddies, all togged out in designer black. Villains-in-swanky dens, swish molls, cops-in-plain-clothes-and-uniforms, bad guys who may be good, good guys who may, gasp, be very bad indeed, all in search of a huge stash of cash. And helmed by Prabhas, who strode across the gigantic Baahubali canvas, cleaving a mighty path to mythic victory.

After reigning supreme in the ancient land of Mahishmati, Prabhas has left the palaces and royal garments for T-shirts, swag and cargos in his latest action-thriller Saaho. Directed by Sujeeth, Saaho, which also features Shraddha Kapoor, Chunky Panday, Neil Nitin Mukesh and Jackie Shroff, hit the screens today. The film is made on an extravagant budget of Rs 350 crore and took two years to wrap up. Saaho's run-time of 170 minutes seems just as long, if not longer.

Saaho (Prabhas) is a mysterious man who is sometimes a thief, sometimes a policeman and sometimes an avenging angel. He wants to take down an evil empire ruled by the likes of Jackie Shroff, Mahesh Manjrekar, Tinnu Anand, Lal, Arun Vijay and Chunky Pandey. The film begins with a series of robberies, then turns into a police investigation, then into a revenge saga. And between all this you find smatterings of romance as well.

There was a solid reason behind "Why did Katappa kill Baahubali?" and there is a solid mystery behind How on earth, did Sujeeth managed to blow 350 crores on this epic disaster. Sheer waste of time, money and energy. Kattapa ne nahi, Saaho ne Baahubali ko maara hai...

Telugu actor Prabhas's first screen outing since the Baahubali films spills over with promises that it has no intention of keeping. Saaho, directed by Sujeeth, has been made in Telugu, Tamil and Hindi on a budget that is rumoured to runs into a few hundred crore. But the ordinary production design and tacky visual effects offer little evidence of the money.

In the entire story, half a dozen bad men are chasing a black box, and are being chased by police including undercover cops like Ashok (Prabhas) and Amrita (Shraddha Kapoor). Amongst numerous gangs in a futuristic city of Waaji, one is led by Roy (Jackie Shroff). He dies (or is killed) in an accident post which all of the gangs unite to get that black box.

Prabhas is a pretty boy and a giant of a man, the sort of hunk with a face so innocent that he looks like he does not realise quite how hot he is or the effect he has on our hormones as we watch him, his body also pleading not guilty of what it does to villains in films. There are few things more attractive in this world than a person who is not overly aware of their beauty. That charm is diluted though in a film obsessed with its leading man's many positive physical attributes.

SAAHO is the story of a mysterious man on a mission. The foreign city of Waaji is ruled by gangsters and criminals and the biggest of them is Roy (Jackie Shroff). He cleverly manages to get the approval of an Indian minister, Ramaswamy (Tanikella Bharani) for a hydro project in India. He then reaches Mumbai and this is where he's killed in a road accident. His son Vishwank (Arun Vijay) then takes over, which angers Devraj (Chunky Panday) as he wants to sit on Roy's throne.

Recent studies say a human being's attention span is now less than a goldfish's. But Sujeeth's Saaho challenges that theory by bringing it down even lower in its senseless pursuit of God-knows-what. After nearly three agonising hours of clueless chaos and random action between cops pretending to be crooks and crooks pretending to be cops, my mind, body and spirit feel clobbered and crippled.

Story: all over the place. Screenplay: maddeningly muddled. Execution: strictly by the numbers. Outcome: appallingly atrocious. In short, the sum total of Saaho, reportedly made on a Rs. 350-crore budget, is zilch. It is a bloated behemoth that stomps about clunkily and leaves behind a hardly edifying trail. The cops-and-robbers yarn does not contain a shred of originality. The film's unrelentingly shrill pitch is aggravated by the ear-splitting background score and its never-ending action set pieces.

One Word Review... Saaho: UNBEARABLE. A colossal waste of talent, big money and opportunity... Weak story, confusing screenplay and amateur direction.

You probably know the answer to the above question, but writer-director Sujeeth takes you through a maze of twists and turns before he gets there. Pegged as India's biggest action thriller, 'Saaho' gets into the action mode pretty early on. The film begins with signature wide angles of massive structures and grim looking men, who mean serious business.