Custody

Ok the people who are actually honest obedient responsible police officers are VARGHESE, GEORGE,and millitant PHILIP....but but but The sadistic CM and the criminal is DAKSHAYANI and RAJASHEKHAR aka RAJU...whyyyyy????what is the director trying to prove here???what is the conversation between the millitant officer and accused??? Director is trying to tell audience that millitary is actually killing people who has a family too... seriously????and the director deliberately inserted hindu pooja in a scene where CM is talking to her party founder...and the military officer who removes bullet and shelters the accused is xtian?????this is such a useless movie..waste of time watching...bomblast scene was totally unnecessary...and no mother would leave a child in such a traffic that is for sure....what a crap movie it is..🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

The mixture of dark humour and thriller seems to be the right fit for Venkat Prabhu. It's rare to see thrillers like this in Telugu. Welcome Venkat Prabhu sir. Thank you for filling the void.

Chay, absolutely killed it. Glad that he picked this role.

People who have been criticizing or picking out things that are trivial are just shocked or unsettled of how word of mouth is the only thing that's pulling the audience to the theaters. (At the time this review was written).

No one really expected much but this film proves yet again 'Content is King'.

Yes the music apart from the BGM had its flaws but it's a minor inconvenience. It'll be remembered as a classic in the industry for sure!

RATED 5/10 Language: Tamil Source: Amazon Prime

With this cast and masala story, this could be the block buster one. But it failed miserably as a whole. Mainly because of the very poor narration and take the logic holes as granted, especially the dam fight and exhibition scenes.

Surprisingly I can see the "Saroja" Venkat Prabu on the Mortuary van dialog sequence. He utilised full and full of Aravind Swamy and Keerthi in that scene. It was so lovable to watch that scene.

But after that he failed to keep the track and confused between the mass heroism and entertainment.... Finally it become like a 80's masala movie and the art work helped much to make it look much worst....

The essence of this film can be summarised in a line delivered by Chay to Jiiva, "These serious lines are not fitting for you... You follow the normal, jolly route that works for you". If VP follows this, the director will be happier.

The problem in this film is that all twists and turns are normal, easily predictable and cliched. At least, the film makes you sweat with the nail-biting tension running throughout the film. Naga-chaitanya was given due respect, and a lot of mass build-up scenes with effects. So, we cannot say Andhra-Tamil concept was a flaw.

The heroine is a great addition to the film, with her own complex equations brought into the dynamics. Aravind Swamy's complex witty character is a welcome breeze in this otherwise intense film. Ramki's swag with an army machine gun also makes quite a scene in a tense turn.

However, all scenes give us a feel that we have already seen these somewhere else. Jiiva's character is in particular one-dimensional, with a foolhardy nature. With such a low situational awareness, how could he become a cop?! (Not noticing hazards falling in a chaotic site). Maybe this explains why the cops were so weak in this movie. One welcome break is that Premji somehow works as a villain with a disgusting, vile presence. (The politicians were like jokers in the film. Sarath's character was at least demonic in his smoking scenes. The car driver who tries to give a lift, but lusts after the heroine though - could he get any sillier?)

We have to admit that one major blunder was to let go of Aravind Swamy's character in the end, just for the sake of innovation. The following scenes were even more disastrous. With better writing, and perhaps some more character depth to all roles, this could have been different. Still, if one has nothing better to do, one can watch this film for the unique 90's style filmmaking.

Positives.

1. Story.

Though this movie's concept is familiar, the potential of some characters such as Nataraj (played by Sarathkumar) and Raju aka Raazu (played by Aravind Swamy), and their arcs make this a great story on paper. However, due to the messy, half-baked screenplay and the poor execution by Venkat Prabhu, the potential of this movie gets diluted making this movie feel like lost potential.

2. Visuals.

Despite the cinematography not enhancing the movie and even though there are some aspects of the production design, setting, and the lighting in some parts of the movie that are out of place, the visuals, for the most part the visuals look good.

Negatives.

1. Music.

The music of the movie is very mediocre. Neither does it sound good nor does it help enhance the emotions of the movie. Along with that, apart from Timeless Love-which was beautifully and aptly picturized IMO-none of the other songs are picturized well as the choreography was normal, the cinematography, specifically the blocking-there was a lot of generic and still blocking in the songs-was mediocre, and the editing-although was slightly different some times-was also generic so much so that it'll probably remind you of intro and duet songs of many movie set in a college backdrop. Due to this, the song picturizations were very generic and boring, Coupled with this, due to the director adding many unnecessary commercial elements to this movie, pretty much all the songs were unnecessary in the proceedings. Coming to the BGM, the BGM wasn't great at all. It didn't sound great or make the audience feel tensed throughout the movie, which it should've done for an action movie like this. And what do great mass BGMs do? They make the audience feel like badasses too, but none of the movie's BGMs did that.

2. Editing.

Due to the bad editing, there isn't an organic flow between many scenes, especially in the first 45 minutes. Along with that, in the action sequences, the editing could've helped made the movie more exhilarating if there were more quick cuts instead of just the usual slo-mo shots, but since that's not the case, the movie's action sequences seem boring and generic.

3. Screenplay.

The structure of this movie goes like this. The director introduces the movie's main character, Shiva (played by Naga Chaitanya), then shows us his life, who he loves, and the conflicts and relationships between him and other characters before introducing the main conflict of the movie. Though it's understandable that the director took this decision to get us to care about Shiva and Revathi (played by Krithi Shetty), the director stretches this part of the movie for around 30-45 min. When it should've been shorter. Due to the length of the first act, we don't care about the aforementioned characters enough to be engaged in the movie later on. Later on into the movie, there are many logical issues throughout the screenplay and some stupid jokes that dilute the tension. Along with that, Venkat Prabhu stretches some scenes for way too long slowing down the pacing even more making the screenplay of the movie even messier. Coming to the characters, Nataraj and Raju are characters that I thought were different than your usual antagonists, but that's only on paper, Shiva and Revathi were characters which needed more emotional connect for us to be engaged with them on their journey, as they're generically written, and other important characters such as CM Dakshayani (played by Priyamani) and Shiva's father (played by Gopuraju Ramana) were very underwritten and as a result, some scenes become diluted. Also, there were many unnecessary commercial elements in the movie that became speed-breakers and made the slightly unbearable at times.

4. Direction.

Despite the poorly written screenplay, if Venkat Prabhu had directed the movie well, the movie probably would've been an average watch if not a decent one. However, that's not the case. Due to many decisions he took throughout the movie, such as the decision to not cut too much in action sequences, add commercial elements in the story, and to get Sarathkumar to dub with his own voice, ruined the movie quite a bit. If you want to go about it a bit deeper, many action sequences could've used better direction and editing, but due to the decision aforementioned, the action sequences become less exhilarating and a bit boring. Coming to the performances, the director brought mediocre performances from pretty much everyone, including Aravind Swamy. Though this may be due to the writing, everybody gave average performances that weren't good enough to engage us in the movie or even try to save it.

Overall: This movie, which is probably one of Venkat Prabhu's weakest works, could've been a lot better if the writing and technical aspects were as good as the visuals.