Film: SALUTE
My Rating: 3.0/5
Banner: GK Productions
Music: Harris Jayaraj
Cinematography: R D Rajasekhar
Producer: Vikram Krishna
Direction: Rajasekhar
Release Date: August 14, 2008
Cast: Rajnikant, Vishal, Nayantara, Upendra, Kota, Ali, Brahmanandam etc
Movie Review By - Telugu-Film-Rviews.Blogspot.com
My Review:
Story:
A regular cop story, the movie begins with Sathyam (Vishal) who is a tough cop and an honest one too. He is an ACP and believes that law and order must be maintained at all times, however he is more of a peace lover and strongly believes that anyone who has done something wrong can be taken to task under the purview of justice and book of law without using any special methods. This also makes him feel repulsive about the encounter methods.
However things take a turn when a well known politician (Kota) wants to get on to the chair of the Chief Minister and in this process, he hires a contract killer and gives him a list of names that have to be killed. However, he has a shock of his life when he gets news from the killer that someone else is already on the job without his involvement. Sathyam is given the assignment of nabbing the culprit and finally he manages to arrest Prathap (Upendra) who ironically is an ex cop himself but then he does not believe in the law system since he gets betrayed professionally. The ideology clash between Sathyam and Pratap goes to a peak and then the hero decides to put an end to this by proving his point. Is he successful in his mission? What is the link between Divya (Nayantara) the crime reporter and him? All this forms the rest of the story.
Performances:
Vishal: is very impressive as a cop. He has taken much care in his looks and body language, and even went to the extent of shaving his head off when the story demanded. Nayanatara: is more the hero's neighbor and love interest than a TV journalist. In fact, except in one dialogue and in some scenes where she holds the camera, the audience would not even know that she's a journalist! Upendra is superb in a role with negative shades. His role was applauded by the audiences more than anyone else's! Kota Srinivasa Rao is as natural as he can be as the evil-minded politician. Tanikella Bharani has a limited role as the heroine's doctor-father and Hema appears opposite Bharani. Sudha Chandran, the dancer from Mayuri, appears as the hero's mother in an insignificant role. Ali as the heroine's aide, Brahmanandam as a broker at the RTA, and Senthil in a role that he repeats from Bharateeyudu fail to generate much comedy.
Technical Departments:
The story has nothing new in it. The treatment too is laced with unnecessary scenes such as those involving the children, and has scenes that miss logic. The screenplay is generally too loose to hold the interest of the audiences throughout. Music has Harris Jairaj's signature all over. Re-recording falters sometimes. Lyrics are good for the first song nammara nEstam.... Choreography, though not the dances particularly, is good on the whole, and particularly for the second song gaDagaDagaDa... involving children, superheroes, and graphics. The last song Endammaayaa... is typically Tamil in its picturization, and that's possibly why Chiranjeevi's poster is shown in the backdrop in the starting of the song - to attract Telugu audience too! (There's also a dialogue " Megastar anTE mass...", probably for the same reason, elsewhere in the movie.) Nayanatara's sizzling performance in one of the songs may cater to the masses, but doesn't help the movie much anyway. Camerawork is impressive. Dialogues by Shashank Vennelakanti are good and thought-provoking as needed. Action choreography is interesting, though the fight sequences are shot to be long.
Presentation:
The director has come up with a wafer thin plot and though his presentation was good, the narration lost out big time and it turned out to be pathetic. The dialogues are stale, the script is feeble, the screenplay has not been executed perfectly. The saving grace for the movie is the above average music with some soulful tunes and the cinematography was eye catching. The costumes department was decent and the frontline sectors failed miserably. Vishal is impressive in his new muscular look and looked like the perfect cop guess that's one reason why he looked stiff at few scenes, Nayan on the other hand was oozing out glamour in the songs but then she was totally decked up during the movie so her role is actually negligible. Upendra did his bit to give an anti hero feeling but his role was not well etched, Kota did a brilliant performance while the comedy track between Ali and Brahmanandam looked silly. The others did not have much scope to perform so they are not in the list.
Bottom Line:
While the movie does pass on the message that the people in the society should generally be more proactive, there is not much good in the film except for the hero and good camerawork and (lengthy) action episodes! Still, this is not the first movie with the exact same message! And, did the politicians, police, or public change, by the way? Why or why not? Let's ask ourselves too!
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