No thrills
What could happen if a man who is on a killing spree challenges a tough cop to nab him? The much-awaited crime-thriller V dropped on Amazon Prime on Friday evening, the firstever Telugu film to release on an OTT platform.
The plot revolves around DCP Adithya (Sudheer Babu), the most happening police officer in town, who’s on a hunt to nab the killer Vishnu (Nani). The killer drops clues for the police officer to decipher. So, will the cop nab him?
Unfortunately, for all the hype and expectations the film created (and despite having Indraganti Mohan Krishna, a film-maker known for his strong writing skills as director), V
seems to have gotten a lot of things wrong in it. The director may even have lost the plot when while making an action thriller for the first time, he chose to focus on elevating the principal characters’ design. With the writing and screenplay found wanting, V seemed like heading nowhere.
What may have killed it for V is that it is neither a comprehensive crime thriller nor a full-fledged action entertainer. It just hangs uncertainly in between. However, the film does have its share of interesting elements, including good performances, action sequences and technical finesse.
V even starts off on an
exciting note — elevating DCP Adithya’s heroism, Vishnu’s approach, etc. Just as the audience begins anticipating an interesting cat-and-mouse chase, the story fails to take off.
Indraganti’s attempt to branch out into a new genre is surely welcome, but he falls short of packaging a proper thriller. The killer’s flashback doesn’t create any sympathy for him. The romantic tracks for both Nani and Sudheer Babu weren’t exciting and the climax turns out to be just too ordinary.
That said, the writing leaves its mark in a few places with quirky and funny conversations.
Nani is the soul of the film, effortless as he is even in a grey character. As much as he brings laughter with his witticism and one-liners, his Army background scenes don’t seem convincing. Sudheer Babu does well as a flamboyant cop, and even matches Nani’s performance. While Nivetha Thomas’s character, called Apoorva, lights up the screen, her role as a crime writer who researches psychopaths was left hardly explored. Overall, V falls short of becoming the true-blue thriller we had hoped for.