Have you ever questioned why some films fail to ring a bell with nearly all of the viewers and critics regardless of getting a lot of the issues proper? Have you ever discovered your self within the minority with regards to defending what you assume was a great film however for some inconceivable motive is being dismissed by the bulk?
Tollywood famous person Mahesh Babu’s Khaleja is one such movie, which did not get its due when it launched. And I’m unsure even a decade later whether or not the viewers has come to totally recognize what this movie managed to perform throughout the slender confines that defines mainstream leisure in Telugu cinema.
In 2010, earlier than the discharge, Khaleja had created fairly a hype among the many movie-going viewers. Mahesh and director Trivikram Srinivas have been coming collectively after a niche of 5 years. Their earlier outing Athadu (2005) was a smash hit on the field workplace.
In Athadu, Mahesh performed this stoic hit man with a dry sense of humour. His stone-faced performing added weight to the mysterious Clint Eastwood-esque persona of the man you need to by no means make the error of messing with. The efficiency was such successful that he even carried a few of that power into Pokiri, which was one other smash hit in Mahesh’s profession. Both Athadu and Pokkiri got here to re-define his onscreen picture as he shrugged off his boy-next-door charms to the stoic with a killer vein persona. And it sort of created a hero template for Mahesh, which he tirelessly pursued for the subsequent few years within the hope to repeat the success of Athadu.
Trivikram wished to redefine Mahesh’s onscreen picture with Khaleja once more. Mahesh’s G Seetarama Raju is fluid, talkative, and spontaneous within the film, versus the chilly, the calculative and expressionless killer in Athadu.
In Khaleja, Trivikram examines the idea of God. After a sequence of occasions, Raju finds himself in a village full of people that venerates him. “In this village, everybody thinks you’re a god,” Subhashini (Anushka Shetty) tells Raju after he was knocked unconscious for just a few days in a bloody fistfight. “You could have told them that I’m just a taxi driver, no?” wonders Raju in his normal playful tone.
The villagers are below siege by some unseen energy. It’s as if the village has been poisoned with individuals of all age teams falling useless like bugs. In a state of sheer panic and helplessness, the villagers flip to God. And the village’s fortune teller duties one other believer with the job of discovering their god, their saviour, aka Raju.
Raju, in the meantime, is wandering the damaging terrains of the Rajasthan desert. He’s on a private mission and he is oblivious of the facility that’s shadowing his each transfer. As he navigates the desert, he finds just a few allies — Baabji, Miriyam and Subhashini. And when these characters and their quirks are put collectively in the identical body, we get a goldmine of irreverent, darkish comedy. Mahesh particularly lets his hair down and loses his inhibition to sink his enamel into his character Raju, which marked a big pivot in his profession.
Besides the narrative fluency with which Trivikram unravels the plot of Khaleja, he additionally packs it with a handful of electrifying moments. Especially, within the pre-interval stunt scene, when Raju hunts down those that tried to kill him. Or the motion scene set towards the medical camp when Raju for the primary time steps as much as save the villagers.
Khaleja is without doubt one of the greatest works within the careers of Mahesh and Trivikram.
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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
