Daaku Maharaaj

The first half of the movie delivers while the second half is a bit dragged. The portrayal of balayya is new and the director added the style and flavour of lokesh kanagaraj movies.

Balayya came out of his comfort to take such risk of making a movie that could have ended a disaster if not for Bobby koli. The acting is nice and music is good.

This movie proves that balayya is never in his peak but he is his peak. The movie did not miss the commercial elements. But urvashi rautela's role was shortened and it was good that way, otherwise it would have spoiled the work. Though it may feel overdramatic sometimes it is perfect for the sankranti season to have mass movie like this.

A good movie if you can enjoy keeping the logics and all other things behind. It was better than most balayya's movies in the past ten years.

I don't understand why people are so obsessed with other movies this sankranti because people were ready to see all the things balayya use to do back then but does not want to watch him in a role where he has the scope to act good which he did.

The movie is a surprise to me. Don't listen to the negative reviews and watch it with a blank mind.

But the balayya in the first half is fire. Want more like this from balayya.

Go and enjoy the movie.

Bobby seems to have picked up where he left his villainous role in animal movie.

These type of movies need a ruthless villain and Bobby delivers, your all familiar with Balakrishna style, larger than life character.

The movie is a good weekend entertainer, with a recycled storyline of good vs evil.

The director's of south have found a winning formula of cramming 2 stories into one movie, although highly entertaining and your getting more movie for your buck. Not every movie can pull this off and this is where daaku maharaj leaves you yearning for more.

This movie would have been a solid 10 but, storyline seems rather rushed.

Routine south Indian movie, where hero fights to save a village or a family with some backstory and few elevation scenes.

Positives: 1. Balakrishna performance 2. Thaman background score 3. No cringe comedy between hero and other characters 4. No unnecessary between hero and heroine 5. All the elevations worked well because of Balayya's screen presence

Negatives: 1. No snakes and ladder game between hero and villain. Always hero wins as in all the south Indian movies 2. Few emotions didn't work well 3. Few scenes in the second half are not that engaging and felt bore 4. Multiple villains just to extend the storyline and have more fights 5. Few illogical scenes from direction point of view.

The story telling, what a pressentation of a cliche story line .. its fabulously crafted .. and the twists and film surprises, i knowingly dont want to give spoilers for those who havent watched and urging for not to check wikipedia or spoilers , the magic of the film is the journey with the characters found a complete strategically making of this film, casting artists from north indian cinema industry, but also keeping the values of south indian cinema .. i particularly love the way south indian film makers speak about the religion , belief and doesnt hesitate to speak , unlike bollywood where film makers take a middle route ..

IDaaku Maharaaj is a new Telugu language movie directed by Bobby Kolli and it stars Balakrishna, Pragya Jaiswal, Shradha Srinath and Bobby Deol with a cameo appearance by Urvashi Rautela. This movie tracks well with Balakrishna template where he is introduced as nobody but has a flashback where was a savior of people and he unleashes that fierceness in the climax. No surprises there. This movie was as predictable as sunrise and sunset.

While there is nothing wrong with formulaic commercial mass movies, the way this particular movie is written is an insult to the audience. The makers planned a "high elevation" scene every 10 minutes where we see Balakrishna uttering a senseless "punch dialogue" to cater to the "masses" followed by equally senseless songs with disgusting lyrics disguised as "mass numbers" all the while aided by S. Thaman's raucous background score that he lifted from Anirudh's Jailer theme "Alapara" and Hans Zimmer's Dune desert bass. Fortunately, this movie was not as loud as his other recent works so that's a concession, I guess.

While the movie shows so many objectionable scenes, especially involving little girls and women, the audience have to come accept that these form the core of a "Balakrishna Template". This is an unfortunate development where the audience make this kind of low effort scrap a commercial success. I cringed a little every time Balakrishna spanks the female lead in the movie. If that is not enough, the director Bobby Kolli made a little girl, probably a 6 year old, spank the female lead for Balakrishna in the name of "mass". Not stopping there, the liberal use of double entendres which leave no room for imagination is low even for Balakrishna's standards. The screenplay leaves no element of surprise by providing you exactly what you'd expect to happen exactly at the time you'd expect to happen.

What felt fresh, again for a Balakrishna template, was the cinematography. They were more subdued than a typical Balakrishna movie. However, the color grading was all over the place. There are scenes where excessive grunge effect was applied turning blood into a black colored liquid, again, presumably, to appease to the masses I guess.

Bottomline: This movie was a low effort scrap that caters to very specific set of audience.