VR (Vikrant Rona)

As far as its visual aesthetics and sound design is concerned; the movie set a new standard for all the regional industries around. The massive sets, the gorgeous color grading, and the art direction, in general, have valiantly put forth an immaculate display that ostensibly had both style and significance! Sadly, the same set of remarks does not seem to apply to the script!

The sort of grace they effortlessly conveyed through their graphical presentation is missing in their Writing counterpart. While the narrative tends to get pretty gloomy and ambitious with its somewhat serious tonality, the 'supposed' twists and turns, however, fail to create a lasting impact.

Despite having a bunch of known faces in the ensemble, almost all the characters come off as premature, and underdeveloped. With the sole exception of our lead protagonist, Vikrant Rona, played by an ever charismatic Kichcha Sudeepa who with his incessant appeal more than makes up for the apparent inadequacies.

It's certainly a step in the right direction as well as a big leap for the Kannada Industry, but still, they have a long way to go, and lots of hurdles to overcome.

Vikrant Rona could have been a great thriller. But it falls quite short. Set design, art direction, cinematography, and of course, Sudeep's acting are all pretty brilliant. The main core of the story is also not bad. Where it fails is in the execution.

We get to revisit Kamarottu again. You will be pumped up at the beginning. But then it devolves pretty quickly. The climax is much better than the rest of the movie though.

The things that went wrong with the movie are-

1) Romance: This kills the movie singlehandedly. It's slow, uninteresting, too long, bores the heck out of you by killing the main story's momentum a thousand times.

2) Songs: They are ok-ish, but every one of them feels out of place and unnecessary.

3) The movie's characters and their mannerisms are hyper-urban and their conversations use too much of fine English/Hindi for a story set in the middle of a place like Kamarottu. I hated this in Rangitharanga and hated it even more in VR. (Sudeep/Anup can learn a thing or two on this aspect by watching movies of Rakshith/Rishabh/Raj Shetty.)

4) One of the climax's big reveals can be seen right away in the beginning. The director's attempts to hide it becomes annoyingly way too obvious.

5) The small things that further degrade the movie are the cheap jump scares, terrible jokes, cliched horror-movie scenes, forgettable dialogues, poor acting by Nirup Bhandari, and too much of melodrama.

Despite all these negatives, the movie has some great moments, and they show the potential of the director. I hope he does a better job in his future ventures.

All my stars are for the 2nd half & climax.

The 1st half drags with unnecessary songs, heroism & some useless character /actors J . Fernandes being one of them.

Imagine a shorter 1hr 50 mins with a tight script would have made a gem.

Rangitaranga was better not the best due the same reasons.

The 2nd half justifies the 1st even though many unnecessary elements could have been avoided.

Acting is good, photography , art direction looks decent but action seems too over the top. 3D release is just a gimmick.

VikrantRona (2022)

Easily one of the best thriller in recent time with a perfect mix of adventure, fantasy and horror backdrop. Top notch making, Background scoring, Quality VFX, 3D Effects and a decent last min twist elevated the film.

Worth a Theatre Experience.

I had very huge expectations from this film but lets down in every way.. Negatives:-Soo many plothiles missing in the story and there is absolutely no professionalism in Anup Bhandari's work this time out.. He had nothing new to offer from his side..neither to script nor to direction.

Poor ripoff of rangitaranga, with very similar villain and very similar climax ((((SPOILER :- I SHOULD SAY XACT SAME CLIMAX .. JUST LITTLE BIT DIFFERENT WAY OF GETTING THERE )))).

I was really pinning my hopes on the movie having a fresh concept sm based on phantom or a new hero but this is rangitaranga copy paste ...ABSOLUTELY DISSAPPOINTED... Another problem is there is no proper continuity in the story and dialogues are not given enough time for audience to connect. No ones dialogue delivery is upto the mark apart from Baadshah . Its just one dialogue after another with no connection to film..And most of the dialogues are not even required. Movie places comedy here and there which works averagely well but there is very quick transition from comedy mode to serious mode which again really fails to make audience connect..it has not been clear cut or well planned...they just piled one scene after another without giving it a structure and drew soooo sooooo many substories and a useless love story ,mother son story, which is there only to add to the unwanted 90s melodrama. Also chikkibombe song is complete bs. Illogically placed .

Jacqueline should hv had a stronger role. Rn they just used her as a bait for hindi audience. Also the script is soo diluted with unwanted dialogues and chenistry that we dont connect with main story. Had the movie been crisp and tight it would have definitly had a better impact. As an editor i can easily cut 40-50 minutes of this movie as they had no impact whatsoever. Also the story has lot of jumps like Eg:- sudeep is investigating sm jump to sudeep making daughter sleep jump to nirup and neetha investigating jump to sudeep finding new body jump to nirup neetha love story and bs. No proper connection point. KGF for example completly nailed this type of execution but anup bhandari screwed it up. As a Kichcha Sudeep fan I am sorry to say really dissappointed yaar...

Positives:- Cinematography and Visuals- i need not even say it. We all know how mindblowingly cool the trailer looked and the movie does not fall short. Though as a movie its not gr8 the cinematography can really be seen as a huge milestone for indian cinema. 95 Crores and the world they have created is absolutely surprising.

Confusing Storyline :- Many people are deeming this as a negative but i was actually intrigued by the way they were setting up more and more people as a potential villain. It really makes you think but anyone who has seen rangitaranga can crack it in the first 30 minutes...but r sure to keave their head scratichung at the interval only to prove u were right all along in climax ....

BGM Score :- TOOOOO GOOOOOOOOD !!!! Hats off to Ajaneesh.. the bgm is sooo good that at times u feel like the bgm is not made for movie but movie is made for bgm.

BAADSHAH KICHCHA SUDEEP:-I dont even need to say anything..Sudeep is way too good for this movie.

I should say the only reason I was able to find the movie atleast endurable was sudeep. That cigar , The jacket and that whip. Just woooow..for his style snd attitude.

Overall 2/5..firm watch for hardcore kichcha fans but others can just go to see stunning visuals.