Saripodhaa Sanivaaram Review

Take a look at the logline of Saripodhaa Sanivaaram:

Surya (Nani), a hot-headed young boy, promises his dying mother that he will allow himself to get angry only one day of the week. Years later, the limits of his promise are tested when he faces off against Dayanand (S J Suryah), an evil cop with anger issues of his own which he takes out on the terrified villagers of Sokulapalem. A complicating factor in all this is Charulatha (Priyanka Mohan), Surya's love interest who also happens to work for Dayanand.

Maybe you recognise the familiar outlines of a Telugu action thriller? An idealistic vigilante-hero versus a degenerate villain. A helpless lady trapped in between. Even so, writer-director Vivek Athreya, in his second collaboration with actor Nani and his first foray into action genre, tells this run-of-the-mill story in a manner that is anything but trite.

Athreya's flair for putting a fresh, humorous spin on what's old and dry is obvious right from the opening scenes where Surya's father (Sai Kumar) sits across from a psychologist (played by Jhansi) and rants about his son's double-life. Rather entertainingly, he recounts Surya's elaborate rage ritual: note down the names of everybody that has pissed him off through the week, and then on Saturday go out to collect his dues. Break bones, that is. Surya flips from a docile government employee to an avenger at 12:00 AM every Saturday. This therapy scene ends with a wee twist. Surya's father isn't there to attend a session, but instead comes to warn the doctor that her husband is a target of Surya's ire. After all, it is Saturday.

Maybe a lesser filmmaker may have rested on the haunches of this high-concept premise and let the gimmicks take over. A ticking clock, a costume change and a hero entry shot backlit by red foglight. Saripodhaa Sanivaaram has all of this, but its volley of witty dialog and a meticulous screenplay allows us to forgive, forget and even relish its schtick. This very same combo of talents is what made Athreya's last film Ante Sundariniki - admittedly, another classic story told with a spin - a delightful watch. In Saripodhaa Sanivaaram, Athreya sprinkles that same magic narrative dust onto a film whose genre is admittedly (sadly?) more suitable for widespread commercial success. (Ante... has a cult fanbase that still laments its commercial failure). And Athreya slyly references his shift from romcoms to action when a character says a meta-dialog about how Saripodhaa Sanivaaram has it all: suspense, fights and drama, but no romance.

Almost by design, Saripodhaa Sanivaaram is overwritten: cluttered with characters and sub-plots balanced on a knife's edge. But out of its soupy mess of threads Athreya spins an intricate, surprisingly coherent web of a story in which even single-scene characters come fully-fleshed. One of those sub-plots in the movie follows a Sethji (Ajay Ghosh) who is stuck in an escalating game of cat-and-mouse with Surya. Lingering at the edge of the screen is Sethji's grandson who has all of one line of dialog and yet gives closure to this sub-plot with a gesture.

Athreya seems to employ a near-mathematical approach to the business of story-telling, entrapping and then releasing his characters from his ruses with exquisite skill. A particularly hairy sub-plot in the film tugs on a hidden connection between Surya and Charu even as the couple becomes close to the villagers of Sokulapalem. You are almost ridden with second-hand anxiety at how Athreya will undo the layers upon layers of plotting he puts down. But he pulls off dainty little story-telling miracles nearly every time.

And far from churning a murky tale, Athreya crafts symmetry. Strained sibling relationships are the centre of both Surya's and Dayanand's lives. Surya loves his sister (Aditi Balan) although she is fed up with being the collateral damage from his Saturday frenzies. Dayanand envies his older brother Koormanand (Murali Sharma) and his wealth, a frustration he takes out on Sokulapalem's villagers by torturing them. Quite astutely, Saripodhaa... points out that its hero and villain may be interchangeable after all: both men with anger issues who have found unhealthy ways to cope. Rather than stuffy monologues, it uses wit and well-timed humour to drive home that point. Also, casting Sai Kumar, an actor famed for playing roles that speak in breathless orations, to play Surya's snarky father feels gleefully subversive.

If any character gets lost in the frenzy, though, it is Charulatha, the wide-eyed ingenue cop who disapproves of Dayanand but is too afraid to do anything about it herself. She is a flimsy foil for Surya and never gets her shining moment. Saripodhaa... deigns to repeatedly reference the Mahabaratha story of how Satyabhama and Krishna team up to destroy Narakasura, but the spotlight never strays from the men.

Nani is completely at home with Athreya's directorial style, effortlessly blending humour and seriousness without diluting either effect. Suryah proves why he is at the top of directors' lists of actors who can play twisted characters with terrifying goofiness.

If nothing else, you might want to watch Saripodhaa... to dissect how a master story-teller splices together a medley of characters and events to create euphoric scenes. Like that one climactic scene tracking three different locations involving a pregnant lady in labour, an ongoing assassination attempt, a car-wreck and an incapacitated Surya. All unfolding in the span of minutes, and culminating in a dizzying fight sequence in which the camera lunges around the room, capturing the epicentre of the chaos.

Athreya is so deft at creating screenplay magic that in the end you don't begrudge him for simply putting a new spin on an old story made up of mainstream characters. You don't even mind its artifice in the way it disavows the hero-villain archetypes, while itself indulging in them. In a sense, Athreya has his cake and eats it too. But when it's such a delicious cake and he is willing to share it with us, who cares?