Vakkantham Vamsi’s Naa Peru Surya (2018) Movie Review

Few films have a lasting impact on you and few films just frustrate you the time, they play on the screen. We end up wondering what might have gone wrong for few and for many, we just say this is another film and walk out. Naa Peru Surya lands in the zone of Frustratingly melodramatic and what might have gone wrong in this.Naa Peru Surya (2018) Movie Review

Right from the first frame, we just feel that this is an illogical story that a wannabe director cooked up as a masala film. How come a person who lacks minimum discipline be in Army? Before joining, they go through many physical and mental tests, it is not just simple like they walk into NDA and get recruited. So, how come such short-tempered man focus on training? Doesn’t he feel frustrated and angry for every order he has to follow? If he can be focused, then how come he doesn’t have a code of conduct on what he should react and how?

The movie starts off contradicting its own character and asks us to connect to it. While it says he can be focused enough to learn guitar so well that he can play for a crowd, it also says that he will hit a person twice with a guitar, for no apparent reason. Army men normally give an aura of respect and they tend to obey the orders. They tend to respect all and only disrespect people who disrespect others. They are not incarnations of Lord Narasimha or they look to hit every moving thing. If anyone shows such uncontrollable temper, they will be never recruited in the first place.

Then, how come Surya survive 7 years in Military? Wasn’t he deemed dangerous before? Why would anyone give him access to a terrorist cell, which will only be open to a lawyer or an officer with a higher authority? With no permission in the army premises, how can anyone roam with the unclassified gun in his pocket? Well, the answers to all these questions will be this just a film. A film can be illogical and take any kind of liberties for story sake. But many makers proved that without trying to be illogical they can make Army films that will deliver on the commercial values too.

We cannot expect such clarity of thought or character design from a movie, that tries to be a mix of 22 to 23 genres. Still, when you promise a character oriented movie, you want the film to have some arc. Vakkantham Vamsi might have the talent to watch ten movies and write one story but as a director, stylish frames do not make up for lack of content. Father and son dynamic in this movie, is one of the under-developed ones you can ever see. A psychologist, who says to his patient you’re egoistic doesn’t care about his own flaws. He doesn’t try to analyze or understand what his wife is going through. Can such character be accepted as an ideal and equally moral opposite to a hero, who is short-tempered? Why would a son, who doesn’t really love his family, love NATION? How come he really go on to become a soldier?

When you think back to this film, except for Allu Arjun’s performance, you can never see what really convinced a set of experienced minds to go for an half-bakedly half-baked script that tries to act as a fan service, then as a character-driven film and then as a love story and then as a social message film with patriotism as the cheapest kind of trigger-emotion? Allu Arjun did give his best but he needs a character that doesn’t just jump from one emotion to another at his will so that he can do comedy, play music, dance when it is required in commercial scale.

If your major arc of the story is strong enough, you don’t need to two-three supplementary arcs to provide you with emotional weight. Also, patriotism doesn’t mean waving the flag or singing National Anthem. It is not about standing at the border too. It means working for the nation and trying to improve it. While such point is hiding somewhere in the 125 punches in 21 days film, we just yearn for some emotional connect throughout. Jai Hind!