Gopichand Malineni’s Winner (2017) Movie Review

Star Cast: Sai Dharam Tej, Rakul Preet Singh, Jagapathi Babu, Priya, Suresh, Sonia Aggarwal, Hari Teja, Mukesh Rishi, Anoop Singh Thakur and Anasuya Bharadwaj.
Cinematography by Chota K Naidu
Edited by Prawin Pudi
Music Composed by S Thaman
Story by Veligonda Srinivas
Directed by Gopichand Malineni
Censor Certificate: UA & Runtime: 155 Minutes.

One of Tollywood’s oldest but most used Krishna Nagar formula is to mix concepts taken from more than one Hit films and then mash them together to make a film for its popcorn audience. Incidentally both the Telugu films released this week (C/o Godavari & Winner) can be studied as a perfect example of this trend followed by the TFI from decades. But moving ahead of the un-interesting C/o Godavari, here we have a little better film in comparison, revolving around the same concept of commercial film, which starts developing between the lead couple as the film progresses and then they happily unite together after a triumph in life.

Winner tells the story of Siddharth Reddy (Sai Dharam Tej), creative director in New Look daily Newspaper. He is a man of contradictions. On the one hand he have no qualms about love while he will not stop hating every other father-racer around him – even if it is his father Mahendra Reddy (Jagapathi Babu), he hates them from the bottom of his heart. At this time, knowing the ‘facts‘ about his daughter RK (Suresh) makes arrangements for her marriage. Taking this as an opportunity Sitara conveys her love towards Siddharth and challenges Adi (Anup Singh) for a Derby race. Will Siddharth win the race and make Sitara’s dreams come true?

The most dis-respective thing that a story writer can do is, Writing a very lazy and unintentionally funny story that makes you cringe in your seats. Here Veligonda Srinivas – Abburi Ravi – Sridhar Seepana and Gopichand Malineni have failed to create an impact on screen with their combined efforts. It looks like with their previous hits, they have found a hit formula and they wanted to stick with it. Even those like Srinu Vaitla had to learn it the hard way and seeing them, if you cannot learn it then you’ll have to, with the kind of film you made. Winner will be a a black mark on their resumes.

Recently all the commercial films, even less commercial film like Ghazi, GPSK have had been inspired by many movies and going for a movie like Winner, if we expect anything else then we are dis-servcing ourselves. Rather listing out the inspirations i would like to say Shebash Ramudu, Pataas, Tandrikodukula Sawaal and many more formats have become too old to be relevant any more. Megastar Chiranjeevi, Balakrishna, Nagarjuna, Venkatesh and Ravi Teja including Pawan Kalyan, Mahesh Babu and Jr NTR have done and dusted this format in many films. So repeating the same formula with a new hero doesn’t make it a new film. “For me it will be New” attitude wont help in this content driven smart world.

Going into the characters created by the team, someone who was hurt in a very young age wont be such happy-go-lucky in any manner. If the hatred has to come out in a character then either take it to peakest level or have sequences, where the spurts of hatred go to the extreme levels than normal. If you cannot give a character such an edge to show itself what kind of writing are you expecting it to be even if it is a commercial cinema. Commercial Cinema doesnt mean six jokes, two fights, five emotional scenes and four dance songs, you need characters like Indra Sena Reddy, Siddhu Siddharth Roy, Balu, Chinna Babu, Chanti Abbayi, James Pond, and many more inspirations that the actor can take from his own uncles films and the writing team can also get inspired from these. Dialogues are a joke in this film and the running gags such as Singam spoof, Peter Heins, Horseman Babu are nothing but a creative vomit of a lazy erroneous mind. If this kind of attitude doesnt go away from TFI, the number of films that we can remember has hits-classics will vanish from the planet of Tollywood. So thing my dear writers before quoting your remunerations.

When it comes to few characters like Jagapathi Babu‘s in this one, we feel sorry for the actor as he could have lent lot more to the movie on the whole. See Nannaku Prematho and Legend once again if you have any doubts. Mainly my problem with the makers lie at them trying to use, Rakul Preet Singh – Anasuya’s bodies to market the film and not entirely concentrate on writing a entirely coherent script or a sequence. Whomever you may be what ever you status may be, one day we all have to grow old and look at our work to say at least “I have done this“, what will this kind of movie will be to showoff or even be proud off. The future generation as they will be more smarter they might just troll each and every movie from TFI with out any second thoughts. The golden period, the rebellious age, the new age all have come and gone in Telugu cinema, and today its all about crap-age. Films are meant to be entertainment at the basic level and at intellectual level as well, cant accept such timid lifeless, meaning less, just for fun films anymore.

In the acting department, its again a big letdown since no one is able to deliver something good mainly due to crummy script. Supreme star Sai Dharam Tej looks tired in the whole film with an frowzled kind of get up. A common man Chiranjeevi became a Supreme hero only and only after being able to deliver consistently through 70 odd films, because a person belongs to his family becomes a hero does a movie called Supreme doesn’t become a Supreme star. It needs lot more effort and dedication from Sai Dharam Tej to maintain the Tag and justify it. For example, any hero from Mega compound the major asset is grace in dance, in this film along with looking tired, he didn’t even reach up to his own standards. Rakul Preet Singh, even in some songs and few scenes looks over burdened by work and didn’t even get time for proper make up. In important scenes like, her exposing her cleavage and thighs running hurdles, she looks ravishing at the same time in less important emotional scenes, she looks dull, tired and very uneasy. Rest of the cast Ali, Prithvi, Hari Teja and Vennela Kishore once again try to raise a few laughs with their scenes.

Coming to other technical aspects, Winner has some good visuals but a weak soundtrack with nothing exceptional in its album excepts for an above average track called “Pichonne Aipoyya“. Thaman failed to provide complimenting score for the film, the musician took a lot of inspirations from a decade old films for BGM score. The editing by Prawin Pudi comes as the culprit since the film is too log at more than 150 minutes of duration and could have been trimmed by at least 30 minutes cutting out all the un-required drama, songs and dragged romantic sequences.

Well i have nothing more to add to what i have been saying right from the start of this review. These kind of films have to be avoided and my sincere request to the audience would be, even if you find one sequence entertaining don’t spend your time and money on these kind of movies. Saying that, I wont mean in this film there is anything interesting or entertaining through its run-time (If you like Rakul Preet, go and watch Parashaanura once again, no need to watch the movie for that).

Survi Review: 0.5/5