Film: Mestri
Rating: 1.75/5
Banner: Siri Media Pvt Ltd
Cast: Dasari Narayana Rao, Mohan Babu, Srihari, Sujitha, Vijay Kumar, Pradeep Rawath, Rahul Dev, Sayaji Shinde, Chandramohan, MS, Giri Babu etc
Music: Vandemataram Srinivas
Cinematography: C H Ramaraju
Editing: Gautham Raju
Art: B V Rao
Story, Screenplay: Dasari
Director: Suresh Krissna
Producer: K Ramakrishna Prasad
Release date: 12/03/2009
It was with a great anticipation that ‘Mesthri’ was awaited since the buzz was it had a lot of dig on Chiranjeevi and his political debut. Also, the combination of the Congress sympathizers Dasari, Mohan Babu, Srihari generated enough excitement for political undertones. How much of it is actually true, let us see.
Story:
Palakollu (Dasari) joins the shipyard as an ordinary loader and in no time, he uses his wit and intellect to arrange for a land to the workers so that they can build their homes. As expected, he becomes the ‘Mesthri’ for them. However, he has obstacles in the form of their boss Subbaraju (Pradeep Rawath) and his brother Adiraju (Sayaji). After the death of Subbaraju, in the hands of Mestri, the flashback is revealed that Mesthri is actually Major Narasimham and he is there to take revenge on the murderers of his disciple Major Devaraj (Mohanbabu). Srihari played the role of a suspended cop. In between all this, there is a Gandhian Gopalakrishnaiah (Vijay Kumar) who helps Mesthri in one of his court cases. But who is Gopalakrishnaiah? That’s suspense. Does he get successful in his revenge seeking mission? All this forms the rest of the story.
Performance:
It was a Dasari show as is the case with most of his movies and he carries out his role with fair standards. His dialogue delivery in some scenes were impressive, Mohanbabu has a whirlwind appearance and he has his share of strong dialogues, Srihari looked handsome and though his performance was subdued, his action sequences were alright, Sayaji was regular, Vijay Kumar was average, Pradeep Rawat was mediocre, Sujitha looked sweet, Rahul Dev came and went, MS was usual, Giri Babu and Chandramohan did their bit as required.
The others were filling the screen with their presence. The director has come up with a routine storyline but he managed to keep things going during the first half with a decent screenplay and good pace. However, the narration went really messy during the second half with a lot of drag and some illogical climax situations.
The presentation was good as the music and the background score was impressive and the cinematography has captured the angles and the emotions correctly, even the lighting effects have been neat.
Editing could have been a lot better during the second half, costumes for Mohan Babu should have been more disciplined in his army uniform, and the art department has done an okay job. The dialogues were filled with enough punch and ammunition and it got few whistles and claps from the front benchers. The script had flaws and the screenplay could have been much better.
Analysis:
The first half of the film was able to keep the curiosity factor high and it looked like the second half will have some good momentum to culminate a good climax and give a thoughtful message to the audience but then the last 30 minutes of the film was a major drag and as it is the content part was not much so the film depended a lot on a tight screenplay which went haywire during the thirty minutes.
Though many from the camp were denying that the film did not take a dig at anyone, a fair share of dialogues was spoken that gave a stick to Chiranjeevi and his political role. Literally, the song ‘Nagamalli daarilo…’ looked like a tribute to Chiru, not stopping at that, few scenes with Vijay Kumar and the repeatedly spoken words such as ‘Master’ ‘Andarivaadu’ pointed fingers only in one direction. Even the TDP folks were not left out in this party as references have been made using terms like ‘Tiger’ ‘Garjana’ , Telangana issue and few other aspects.
It is also amusing to hear Dasari say that the character played by Mohan Babu gets killed because he is a Dalit and that too by the upper caste. Well, the issue was about the land and caste and creed has nothing to do with the killing. Just when audience was hoping that Dasari will not show his eccentricity, he came up to his original antics in the second half and that too in the climax. How ridiculous can things get when a song sung by Dasari is played on the screen in a public meeting when the time comes to expose the villain instead of showing the evil acts of the bad man. A good thing was the song on the essence of Telugu which was quite patriotic and commendable, written by C Na Re. The film is an outright mass treat and it could have been better had the second half been handled well. Though the content part is meek, it is the presence of the stars and the dialogues that provide some solace. The criticism on Chiru and other parties looked quite evident enough.
