Evaru: Suspenseful Music

Cast: Adivi Sesh, Regina Cassandra, Naveen Chandra, and Murli Sharma
Directed by Venkat Ramji
Music Composed by Sricharan Pakala
Edited by Garry BH
Cinematography by Vamsi

A movie like Evaru jogs me back to CID series that ran for 19 years on Indian Television without a break, but with subtlety and more cruelty with no one breaking doors, no one yelling – “Kucch Toh Gadbad hai“. Because the entire movie is a clever conversation between two equally intelligent and “I will go to any length” kind of characters, you feel like it is investigation and interrogation than narration. Original Spanish film (Contratiempo) did the trick of narrating a crime scene and then exploring clues with backstories being stitched carefully. They lead to real situations and manipulated clues that end up solving two cases that are not at all connected.

Telugu Screenplay adapted “Badla” flavor with emotional backstories trying to elevate the sympathy factor and cruelty as well. While the crime is established properly, motive and characters in Badla look stronger as the villain was given more bones. Peeling off those layers with just words seemed quite an achievement. Here, for Adivi Sesh, the writing had to be more generic than Hindi and Spanish version.

Generic in the sense – a lady billionaire sending money directly through cash or wire transfer while we know that they use other techniques. *Spoiler* If a cop gets a wire transfer from the accused, he/she will be seen as conspiring and compromising person at the same time defense will corner you for giving bribe.

Generic in the sense – a lawyer wouldn’t directly enter into a trap even if it is not laid out that way. They have their men. (We have to work with real lawyers to know that and I cross-checked it.) Generic in the sense – A lawyer will go through 100s of background verification processes before trusting a corrupt person. It won’t be walk in the park to fool one, that too, a successful one. But here we are asked to suspend our disbelief and agree that a cop is believed by a lawyer in a jiffy.

Generic in the sense – A lady/gent who committed a crime will cover all loose ends by herself/himself. Here she feels threatened with one random person’s accusations whom she can’t trust as he is said to be corrupt to the core. When talking to such a person, a guilty man/woman will try to be aware of how much the other one know and then trust only when they can count on some sort of loyalty from this person at least by holding aces against them too. Lawyers have a great instinct to catch on this and they play to the insecurities of a criminal much better than a cop. Hence, lawyers get crores and a cop, unless corrupt, “a transfer”.

Generic in the sense – for someone it is easy to make another person believe that they are on their side when the person knows their weaknesses very strongly. Unfortunately, here we get money transactions – which always throw more curveballs as the rate increases, preferred to be the major trust builder, which scream out loud that a person is guilty. People fear more about prestige and reputation than money.

Generic in the sense – Conversations between two intelligent people have each other trying one-up another and judge how the other person is shifting between the words to catch a pattern and show it to them, that they slipped. Here, Regina Cassandra seems more plastic without any such traits and Adivi Sesh just tries nothing interesting to say that he is corrupt, manipulative yet can be trusted. Still, we see him being trusted throughout as if being corrupt makes a person automatically trustworthy and throwing money will silence a small-time cop, who can blackmail again.

Well, the suspense of disbelief is key to a film but logical character traits and interesting build of a character are required as this story revolves around the assassination. Director Ramji was great holding our interest in key moments but he did not build it to a level where we just think that this is the best possible way of telling this story. He engaged an audience member but there is always one or two interesting things that can elevate the script. This is about that and not nitpicks.

 There are touches from Writer and director in using Sama Dana Beda Dandopayalu as Telugu literature points out a criminal would do in the script. They are…

Samopayam – Using Sympathy and Religion

Danopayam – Offering 2 crores as bribe and compensation

Bedopayam – Threatening everyone whoever knows the truth about her.

Dandopayam – Killing the biggest threats in her way.

But all these touches are said explicitly as if audiences cannot catch them if they show visually and that dragged the film towards the end too.

Adivi Sesh and surprisingly, Regina Cassandra seemed to be quite inconsistent with their character tone. Sesh has a limited range and even though tries to push it, he played the corrupt cop and civilian characters in same vain than bringing in differences to show how much he tried to adopt a cop body language when he is not person – Character in the film. Regina was left wondering, one feels so, because of the way she portrays. That casual vibe and ease that she has to convince us in eyes are missing when she is playing a master manipulator.

While Evaru is decent to watch, one feels that Sri Charan Pakala made a difference in elevating scenes with the score when they were itsy-bitsy. This film is a suspense that holds your interest through sound design than the sound plot. They could have made it even more spine chilling but did give a decent one. It seems like someone said let’s finish it off and then move to next after a point of time which made it a visual crime scene that is narrated by voice over better than visually.

Theatrical Trailer: