Ravanasura Review

A trend in Tollywood is emerging where movies attempt to cover every genre in two hours. They start out as lighthearted comedies, but through a series of micro-deceptions and distortions, they ultimately become dark sagas. The shift in mood typically happens, of course, in the big pre-interval revelation. Das Ki Dhamki was a recent example. Now Ravanasura follows up, with a story that trapezes from an office comedy to a noir, sadistic, action thriller. Does this circus act work? Don't hold your breath.

The movie starts with a gruesome murder. The perpetrator, who is caught on camera, is Vishal Talwar (Sampath Raj), the CEO of a pharma company. He is immediately jailed, but there is a catch - Vishal has no recollection of ever committing the act. So Vishal's daughter, Harika (Megha), turns to criminal lawyer Mrs. Kanakam (Faria Abdullah) and her employee Ravi (Ravi Teja) to defend her dad in court.

Despite the violent start, the first half of Ravanasura is tame and jolly, akin to the "asura" being still asleep. The movie introduces Ravi and Kanakam, former collegemates whose teasing relationship, along with some witty puns from their colleague Hyper Aadi, provides some comic relief. However, with the flip of a switch, a sinister side of Ravi emerges, and the monster within him comes out to play. In one pseudo-poignant scene, Ravi's face aligns with a poster of Batman's Joker bearing the words "there is a little bad in everyone", underscoring his descent into darkness.

Ravi is by no means as sinister as Joker, though. Ravi may be bad, but he is bad for a good reason. And Ravanasura unfolds as just another vanilla justice-revenge story. You won't even have to wait till the final reveal to guess that Ravanasura is not breaking any storytelling barriers. Even a disquieting rape scene doesn't intrigue, because one knows that the conventions of the mass-market Telugu script will ultimately hold.

I want to take a moment here to criticize Ravi Teja's recent scripts, which tend to preen his image as a superstar to the detriment of the quality of the overall movie. Unlike his friend and fellow "outsider" Nani, who understands the importance of allowing the story to guide his characters, Ravi Teja appears trapped in his own gilded cage of fame and public image. This has limited his ability to tell diverse stories, leaving him with only one means of expression: attempting to expand the confines of this cage. Bigger fights, bigger songs, bigger budgets.

This desperate strategy was evident in his last two movies, Dhamaka and Ramarao On Duty, where Ravi Teja dominated the screen, elbowing out the others. Ravanasura is no different. Murali Sharma, Ramesh Rao and Sampath Raj make brief appearances. There are three different actresses - Faria Abdullah, Megha Aakash and Anu Emmanuel - who play Ravi's love interests. Promising characters like those of Abdullah and Hyper Aadi are unceremoniously tossed out, never to be seen again, as Ravi Teja's one-man crusade takes centerstage.

And the mass maharaja does not deliver. From his caked-up face makeup to his stifled fight stances - a lot of Ravi Teja's performance feels like a vain attempt to maintain a certain kind of mass appeal that has lost its relevance, and more importantly, doesn't wear well on him anymore.

While one of the cardinal sins of Ravanasura is the disregard for creating substantial roles for its actors, a second, more egregious sin is the lack of respect for the movie's underlying subject matter. Some of its writing has zero due diligence. The plot relies on prosthetic technology, but its illogical usage is an insult to the audience's intelligence.

Ravanasura's songs, while vibrant and fun are ill-placed, sometimes jammed between a jail scene and a murder. And its fights are nothing to behold either.

Ravanasura, ultimately fails in ten different ways.