Story:
A boy’s father is killed by a bunch of people who are part of mafia. The boy grows up to become a Shadow and kills the mafia one by one.
Performances:
Venkatesh clearly seems to be having all the fun with various get ups and action sequences knowing very well what its outcome would be. He does his emotional scenes once again for a millionth time.
Tapsee gets one more film added to her filmography. In all probability she might have got a decent paycheck too. That’s it about her in Shadow.
Catch, chase, underwear, my goodness – sums up Srikanth’s performance in the film.
Madhurima probably is the only actor in the film who seems to have taken the film seriously and tried to act the best by giving everything she had.
MS Narayana tries but the director fails him.
Adithya Pancholi, Rahul Dev, Subbaraju, Supreet, Jayaprakash Reddy, Sayaji Shinde, Nagineedu. The list is endless. They are present in the film only to be killed. A viewer could add his name to the list as well.
Positives:
Few moments in action sequences.
Negatives:
Everything else.
Analysis:
Shadow is another mess from director Meher Ramesh who has clearly an obsession for the grandeur and style on screen. In his fetish for both the director has almost always forgotten about having a basic story for the film. Now one wouldn’t mind this obsession if it were original, we have many directors in various industries who are known purely for their stylistic visuals that inspires as awe but in case of Meher Ramesh even those are ‘inspired’ bits from various sources. So in effect what you have in Shadow is a collage of action sequences shot with ‘inspiration’ from various movies, games etc. All these action scenes are strung together using a sorry excuse of a plot which last known was already done to death in the 80’s itself.
Apart from few ‘moments’ in action sequences, nothings works for the film, including those action sequences itself, in its entirety.
The comedy makes us cry, the sentiment scenes makes us laugh and every new suspense revealed is a new joke on the audience. All the above is packed in such a creative way that its de facto motive seems to be to kill the viewer. To give the credit where its due we have to say that Shadow seems to be a movie where every department is in unison with the vision of the captain of the ship, the director, Meher Ramesh, to obtain its de facto motive.
Music director SS Thaman seems to have given the music with the intent that ‘if it doesn’t kill visually it must kill one musically’. The background music of the film could be used as a replacement for electrocution. If this is what one felt in the comforts of a multiplex with its surround system imagine the plight in a single screen with a poor sound system.
Cinematography was alright. Editing was poor. Choreography again was in tune with the vision of the director and it’s not a compliment.
Bottom-line: Shadow is an audio-visual slaughter of senses. If even 1/100th of the effort put to present Nagababu stylishly was put on the script, the film could have been infinitely better.
Rating: 1.75/5