One Review

It's painful when small-time, mediocre film studios have way too many police uniforms lying around, desperately waiting to be worn. Apart from meaning that there is no end in sight to small-time, mediocre cop movies, it also means that no one bothers to notice that the pants are one size too short for Vadde Naveen.

However, insignificant details like these don't matter here because One was made exclusively for the career of Vadde Naveen. So exclusively that the title was created by pairing the first and the last syllables of his name (this flash of ingenuity is revealed in the opening credits). We can sense you're feverishly raring to see for yourself what they did to revive his career, but to make matters clear, we'd like to inform you that One is a cop story made with one Vadde Naveen, one newcomer heroine, one villain, one politician, one comedian, one mom, one brother, and zero story.

Kallu Das (Dandapani) is a sinister land shark who loves to drown corpses of people he gets murdered, in toddy, and his son's hobbies include rape and murder. One day, the son bumps into the sincere Pardhu (Vadde Naveen), who has just written his UPSC exams and also found himself a girlfriend (Aarti Khaitan), and both of them don't forget each others' glares.

For no reason, there are a few rounds of fighting, which leads to Kallu Das and a dozen grimy-looking, greasy-haired men walk into the ICU of Yashoda Hospital, in order to see his battered, defeated son. Next, Pardhu gets his exam results, which reveal that he has passed. This is when the interval is declared.

As you can broadly make out by now, the second half of the movie is quite crucial. It is where the film urgently needs to get a story from somewhere, anywhere, else the theatre will need to screen public service documentaries on the government's rural schemes that seem to mostly benefit those who make public service documentaries on the government's rural schemes. Members of the audience who walked out, leaving about twenty people in the theatre, were spared of both. Ditto for aforementioned twenty people.

In the second half, Pardhu finishes his training in Delhi and is now this extremely honest police officer who informs his boss that he doesn't hesitate to beat up anyone who wrongs, irrespective of who his father is, bringing up the high point of this movie. Hence, all of Kallu Das' men are tackled, and through Kallu Das' connections, Pardhu is suspended. But Pardhu continues his fight for justice.

Somewhere in the story, the heroine's brother also gets killed. (There's a heroine in the film, remember? No? The director knew it doesn't make a difference.) The rest of the story is about how Pardhu teaches everyone a lesson, and how.

The film is a pathetic effort at whatever it is making an effort at. Vadde Naveen is the only one with enough enthusiasm to last the entire film. Aarti Khaitan is barely there. Thankfully, she doesn't try to be bare there. Then, there's a scene in which Pardhu's mother compliments his son's choice of girlfriend by fondly remarking to him, "Nee face ki intha kanna manchi ammayi dorakadu." We're still wondering if that was really a compliment, and if so, to whom.

Chalapathi Rao and Dandapani are fine as the villains that they are adept at playing. There's a comedy track with Krishna Bhagavan as a petty thief, which is about as funny as watching a traffic light switch colours.

The first song, Nuvve Naa Nayanam, is a decent one, and the background music is fairly okay, especially during the fights, when Vadde Naveen tries to behave like Mahesh Babu while taking on his attackers. As for the dialogues, you have already been given a sample of them.

The fights are really noisy, else you could easily cure your insomnia with this film. That is, if you run out of alternative therapies like trying to count the number of wrinkles on the back of your hand.