Krack Movie Review: A fervent Ravi Teja powers a full-on masala script!

Krack Movie Review: A fervent Ravi Teja powers a full-on masala script!

Barring a few issues, clever casting and some invigorating mass sequences make Krack the action masala flick that the cash-starved box-office needed right now
Rating:(3 / 5)

When, in the initial scenes, the country's most-wanted terrorist gets an opportunity to be interviewed by a reporter (who arrives at the jail with a letter from the Union Home Minister himself) and asks her to give him Rs 50 on national TV, this reviewer prematurely resigned himself to watching an unintentionally hilarious entertainer. But, as the film progressed, the suspiciously mindless writing gave way to some invigorating mass masala stuff, exactly the kind of theatrical experience that was needed to rev up the cash-starved box-office.

Director: Gopichand Malineni

Cast: Ravi Teja, Shruti Hassan, Samuthirakani, Varalaxmi Sarathkumar

Shankar (Ravi Teja in a whacky role, after a slew of shallow characters in the last few years) is a dashing cop with a penchant for harassing whoever brags about his "background". As the Tollywood-esque destiny would have it, he unintentionally comes up against a self-important rascal named Katari Krishna (Samuthirakani as an enfant terrible, whose unhealthy love for his daughter proves to be his biggest undoing) in Ongole, where, as a character says, rowdies are common and a power-cut after 8 pm means that a brutal murder is taking place in the town. 

Director Gopichand Malineni puts the ridiculously bad Winner (2018) behind and makes a no-holds-barred cop actioner that has a sprinkling of typical Ravi Teja acting chops plus some atypical antics from a brilliantly-cast Samuthirakani. The latter goes beyond his Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo act and lends gravitas to the mean character with his subtle portrayal of preposterousness. He even gets an elevation song while the hero has to make do with elevation shots. As Katari Krishna, Samuthirakani makes one wonder if he will successfully finish off the hero's wife, played by a decent Shruti Haasan (her character arc is fun, if not believable). She has an indoor romance song with her cop-husband that threatens to be a precursor to her death (because when a cop's wife has such moments with her ultra-duty-minded hubby, she ends up getting killed by the villain in our movies!).

There is a love story involving a young couple and it becomes the anchor of the story, leading to a somewhat shocking twist. Showing Ravi Teja as a cop who uses his pistol sparingly in a masala flick needed conviction.   

Varalaxmi Sarathkumar delivers a solid act as the villain's malevolent mistress. When she goes searching for a gang of cold-blooded killers in Vetapalem, the film ups the ante. It would have been great had Ravi Teja's fast-track investigations been clever. They are too simplistically done. 

Ram-Lakshman duo choreographs gory action scenes that sometimes overstay their welcome. For that matter, the second half gets enmeshed in too much formula, with the cat-and-mouse skirmish getting dragged a bit (the film's run-time is 153 minutes). Despite the apparent potential, the director fails to resist the temptation of force-fitting a special party song where skimpily-clad women abound. Talking of music, Thaman's BGM is pulsating at times, while the songs, by and large, get full justice in the context of the film. 

The film also casts Kathi Mahesh in the role of a publicity-crazy rabble-rouser. You can accuse the film of anything but not for getting the casting wrong.

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