Yuddham Sharanam movie review: The Naga Chaitanya and Lavanya Tripathi starrer has good things but they are not fresh.
Yuddham Sharanam movie cast: Naga Chaitanya, Lavanya Tripathi, Rao Ramesh and Revathi
Yuddham Sharanam movie director: Krishna Marimuthu
Yuddham Sharanam movie rating: 2 stars
Debutant filmmaker Krishna Marimuthu’s Yuddham Sharanam, starring Naga Chaitanya in the lead role, has strong imprints of a few renowned filmmakers in its presentation. Especially, the narration techniques remind us of Gautham Menon. The better part of the first half travellers back and forth in time, introducing us to the beautiful family of Arjun (Naga Chaitanya), his girlfriend, friends, and a hasty bomb blast investigation led by NIA officer JD Shastri, played by Murali Sharma.
The film revolves around a bomb blast in Hyderabad staged by a greedy and ruthless criminal Nayak, convincingly played by Srikanth, to serve his political masters. The aftermath of blast ruins the simple but beautiful life of Arjun and his family.
Arjun’s parents Murali Krishna (Rao Ramesh) and Seetha Lakshmi (Revathi) are doctors, who have dedicated their lives to medical services helping people in rural areas who can’t afford decent medical care. And Arjun has dedicated his life building a drone inside his bedroom that also doubles up as his work station. It’s 2017 and drones are being used to deliver pizzas. It’s very difficult to understand why director wants us to believe that Arjun’s invention will be the pinnacle of drone engineering. Never mind.
Yuddham Sharanam follows a pattern that we have seen in various other films in the past. It has a young happy-go-lucky protagonist, whose life is easy and peaceful and one day a life-threatening incident threatens to destroy everything he holds dear. And he becomes a reluctant warrior, who has to take on very superior opponents to protect his loved ones. The plotline is quite similar to Naga Chaitanya’s 2016 crime thriller Sahasam Swasaga Sagipo (helmed by Gautham Menon).
Even as Krishna walks us through the very familiar territory of storytelling, he scores on extracting some charming performances from the actors.
Krishna focuses on intimate reactions delivered by the key characters that speak volumes about their untold feelings. It has also helped the audience to strike an emotional connection with some characters, in particular, Rao Ramesh and Revathi, who have played a perfect couple.
The first half packs a good mix of heart-warming and thrilling sequences, where stakes seem to be very high for the protagonist due to a cold-blooded antagonist. But, in the second half, Arjun make the criminal empire built by Nayak collapse like the house of cards seemingly in a single blow.
It sort of feels as if the director has compromised Nayak’s character to make Arjun look stronger, smarter and sharper. Murali Sharma’s character is very confusing as I couldn’t make up my mind whether he’s a good cop or bad cop. Or whether to loathe him or like him. It feels like his character has no spine as it can bend in at least ten different directions at once.
Lavanya Tripathi is another beautiful face in the cast. She plays an ideal girlfriend.
The entire film rests on Chaitanya’s character but his performance falls short. He comes up short on conveying the tension and emotional trauma he has been suffering from his loss through his performance. He has a lot to work on.
Yuddham Sharanam has good things but they are not fresh.
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