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Story:
How a certain Simhachalam (Balakrishna) saves his family from the clutches of villain Jitender (Jagapathi Babu) who vows to kills his family. Who is Krishna and how are Krishna and Simhachalam related? What is the relationship of Simhachalam with his family, form the sub plots of the film.
Performances:
We have said time and again that Balakrishna has been mostly presented in three variations throughout his career. There is the ‘powerful’ persona who is always there for people be it his family, his village or his followers. Then there is the romantic Balakrishna who operates at various levels. One who romances at the innocent villager, one who tries to act cool and modern and all. Finally there is a senior ‘old’ head of the family, village sort of variation.
In Legend the ‘powerful’ and ‘modern romantic’ personas are used by the director. Balakrishna as usual shines in the powerful character and makes fans go crazy all over again. The same can’t be said about the romantic variant who looks completely out of sorts despite best ‘visible’ efforts.
Jagapathi Babu is a revelation here. He is the one who is majorly responsible for all the freshness one feels in this predictable. You have seen this story many times, Balakrishna has done that performance many times but this predictability narrative is made interesting and watchable because of Jagapathi Babu. That doesn’t mean he is a complete dominant force, no he is not because he has been cut for the elevation which is unfortunately what the route director chooses for some easy bucks to be made.
Others that includes heroines Sonal Chauhan and Radhika Apte, comedian Brahmanandam and many character artists all appears inconsequential in the end as none manage to create an impact on the above said levels.
Positives:
Balakrishna as Legend
Jagapathi Babu
Devi’s BGM
Interval
Flashback
Negatives:
Overdose of action
Political drivel
Comedy doesn’t work
Analysis:
Many directors have tried their best to make use of those three variations of Balakrishna that we have mentioned above. Almost everyone knows what works which is the powerful Balakrishna and creates stories and scenes highlighting it. In the process few lose sight of the rest of the film and few unfortunate ones get even the powerful presentation wrong. Boyapati Sreenu however is that one lucky soul who got the two Balakrishna’s mixture right in his previous outing Simha and won the hearts of fans.
The director follows the same formula here again but is clearly not as successful as he was previously. For starters he has failed to engage with the other Balakrishna. Srimannarayana in Simha worked as much as the other character and helped him the older character as well as the entire film. Here the younger character Krishna seems to be completed neglected with not much though given to him. The result is he appears as a big weak link. Similarly when the powerful Balakrishna enters he gets elevated more than required. It’s as if the director knows what the fans would love and he is just feeding them, pleasing them with actual no narrative purpose in the story. What happens is when all that elevation is done with one is left hanging in vacuum and experiences a big fall which in turn affects the overall impact of the movie.
So fans who love to see Balakrishna powerfully will get their wish fulfilled with the caveat thrown in the form of Jagapathi Babu. Boyapati Sreenu creates a Balakrishna show for his fans and cleverly throws in Jagapathi Babu for the rest.
Devi Sri Prasad once again saves the day with his back ground music, something which is getting very good at off late. Technically it’s a neatly packaged film with cinematography being good and decent editing.
Bottom-line : Simha ‘Balayya’ encore
Rating : 3/5