Story:
Arjun is a final year student who falls in love with Roshini, daughter of Hyderabad city Commissioner. While Arjun is busy expressing his love a massive terrorist attack is planned in Hyderabad. While police chase them they take shelter in Basanti College and create a hostage situation. How the love story and hostage situation are resolved is what the film is all about.
Performances:
Except for one scene in the second half Gautam mostly remains calm and isn’t much expressive.But, he is better this time around compared to his first film. He needs to open up a bit in his forthcoming films and not be so uptight.
Alisha Begh has a very little to do in terms of performance but her character is nonetheless important for the proceedings, especially in the first half and till half of the movie in the second half.
Sayaji Shindi plays a very calm and controlled character in Basanthi unlike his usual over the top outings generally, which is a relief. Matching him in relief quotient is Tanikella Bharani who again is given a very positive character role.
Ranadhir and Dhanraj playing the roles of friends in a group get their moments in the overall proceedings and they are fine in those. Actors playing the roles of Muslim terrorists Qazi Nzeeruddin, Babar Khan, Razzaq etc are well selected but ultimately create no impact whatsoever.
Positives :
The storyline of the film
Dialogues
Mani Sharma (Music and BGM)
Hero-Heroine scenes
Negatives :
Not so well handling of subject
Climax
One man taking on all terrorists
Analysis:
Director Chaitanya Dantuluri is back after Baanam. It’s been a long gap and thanks to Baanam’s positive afterlife, people developed good expectations on ‘Basathi’ as well. The director has chosen a very simple plot for his second outing and when the plot is so thin a lot depends on the screenplay of the film. This is where the director scores in parts and looses in parts.
‘Basanthi’ is peppered with little moments that is meant to draw the audience closer to the characters on screen. The director expects us to connect with these characters and imagine them to be a regular gang of friends that we see around us. So when these typical gang is faced with problems we too must feel their problems. The dialogues help a great deal in building that connection but the screenplay and enactment by the cast is not up to the mark. This is where the film misses the bus and the required impact and tension goes amiss.
Certain important sequences that are to create impact, fail to reach their true potential. Add to them the very typical execution related to terrorism –overall punch in the content isn’t that great as well. There are scenes that raise the expectations and they are immediately followed by a mediocre one. This rise and fall of the graph, especially in the second half makes one not entirely satisfied in the end. On the whole it’s an average fare that can be watched once.
Music and background score by Mani Sharma are awesome, especially the latter. As said above dialogues are a major plus for the movie and so is the cinematography. In short more than the actual acting these technical departments set the right tone for the film.
Bottom-line: Decent one time watch
Rating: 3/5