214. Rangasthalam; movie review

RANGASTHALAM
Cert 12A
170 mins
BBFC advice: Contains moderate violence, injury detail, threat, suicide references

Just when I thought that Indian movies were coming down to sensible lengths, along comes a near-three-hour masala.
And, whatever the merits of Rangasthalam, its length is its undoing.
Ironically, its final 30 minutes are arguably the highlight of Sukumar's film but, by the time it reached its crescendo, my bum was numb and my eyelids were drooping.
Of course, I can see why there has been such acclaim for Rangasthalam and its charismatic lead, played by Ram Charan.
His character, Chittu is a village engineer who is hard of hearing and charms with his extreme knee-jerk reactions to almost every scenario from love to violence.
Much of the film is focused on his courting of a beautiful local girl (Samantha Akkineni) and the misunderstandings sparked by his poor hearing.
This lovey-doveyness is counter-balanced by vicious politics surrounding the unopposed president of the village (Jagapathi Babu).
His demands for fines and over-payment of loan interest, leads to some of the villagers killing themselves and if anyone speak out against him and his henchmen, they can expect to lose their lives too.
Aadhi plays Chittu's more thoughtful brother who wants to take on the system intellectually rather than with a bang over the heard.
However, he soon learns that violence is the only language the president and his acolytes understand.
Rangasthalam scores in terms of its vibrancy - the song and dance numbers are lavish and brilliantly choreographed and colour oozes from every pore of the movie.
And it builds into a finale which offers some big surprises.
After appearing to be a solid family movie throughout, its finale suprises, not only in its twists but also with its violence.

Reasons to watch: The vibrant performance of Ram Charan
Reasons to avoid: It is way too long

Laughs: A couple of chuckles
Jumps: None
Vomit: None
Nudity: None
Overall rating: 7/10

Director quote - Sukumar: "Ram Charan and Samantha had never lived in a village before they shot for the but it didn’t take them too long to get into the skin of their character. Ram Charan was so comfortable wearing a lungi that I was convinced that he became Chitti Babu the moment he arrived on the sets."

The big question - Are India's poor really exploited as badly as this?

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