Indra Review

Roused in the middle of the night, I found the Almighty standing at the foot of my bed. "God, is it really you?" I cried out. "Yes, my beloved child, it is." Thrilled, I asked God if I could ask him a question. He divinely waved at me to go ahead. I asked, "God, is Indra yet another movie thick with factionism, one-upmanship, gore, pyrotechnics, emotions and terra firma conflicts...?" To which God beamingly answered, "Of course not, my child. Indra is a movie thick with factionism, one-upmanship, gore, pyrotechnics, emotions, and an all-new-Jala-Yagna... Uh oh! Definitely not terra firma conflicts!"

And so ladies and gentlemen, here I am with the most recent Chiru-starrer, complete with Benaras and Jala-Yagnas... Indra! Hip Hip Hooray!

Indra begins with the depiction of some gruesome communal-annihilations between Indra and Sivareddy's factions. Indra (do I need say who it is?) - Indra Sena Reddy - is a peace-loving factionist (tongue-in-cheek, ain't it?). Plainly, he is one guy who does not have to raise the roof to get his point across - all he has to do is raise an eyebrow.

One fine day, Indra notices that there is dire need for rains in seema, and right away begins the Jala-Yagna. Without more ado it begins raining, and then there is this ghanana-ghanana-ghana sequence and a song flicked from Lagaan. After that, in the best interest of the people of Rayalaseema and for the construction of a reservoir, he forfeits his whole property and hits the road to Kasi. What remains is why and how he returns to seema, and how he establishes peace through war.

Chiranjeevi, the yesteryear dancing dude, is back into his elements with this movie. We must say it's very hard not to notice Chiru's brand new dance-dude avatar. The chances of someone not enjoying Sonali in Indra are analogous to her waistline... slim or none. The casting of Aarti Agarwal as the like of Neelambari in Narasimha is a bit hard to digest, though.

The Paruchuri Brothers do their usual gig by packing a lot of meanness and menace into sentences of just 10 syllables. Unexpectedly, the quality of music and background score from Mani Sharma is mediocre, which turns out to be one of the stumbling blocks for the movie.

The glaring downside of the movie is its done-to-death factionist theme. And we guess that by boarding the faction-flick bandwagon, Chiranjeevi must have validated the Theory Of Morphic Resonance like never before (Theory Of Morphic Resonance, also known as The Law Of The Thousandth Monkey: When the thousandth monkey in a tribe begins to behave in a certain way, suddenly entire unrelated tribes all over the monkey kingdom begin to spontaneously adopt that behavior pattern.). The second downside of the movie is the inconsistency echoed in Chiranjeevi's character, which keeps wavering between those of a bloodthirsty murderer and a peace-loving philathropist.

Indra, with "supreme" dances and a rough-n-ready performance by Chiru, is a Chiru fan's dream come true. At the same time, with its downsides and clichéd storyline, it is almost bound to fall short of an average cinegoer's expectations. All in all, it presents two distinct images: a sumptuous cinematic treat for Chiru fans, and a clichéd tale of communal-annihilation for the unfortunate rest. So, which finger are you choosing?