Andhadagu: Blind man’s bluff

As much as Telugu cinema keeps overdoing its super heroism on the one hand, it also has scope for average lookers on the other who manage to woo the audiences despite their ordinariness.

Nani emerged from this very category to attain a stature of his own. Closely following him is Raj Tarun, a casual yet impactful kind of an actor who plays to his strength and largely meets the expectations of his well wishers. His box-office track record is sufficient proof of this.

Relying heavily on a comic background to his onscreen character, Tarun once again portrays an interesting role in his latest flick ‘Andhagadu’. Shown as a person with visual impairment in a flashback, he has his three friends, with whom he is shown enjoying life despite the loss of vision.

Troubles start adding up when he gains eyesight, courtesy an eye doctor girlfriend (Hebah Patel, a typical Telugu film heroine who does not add professional value to her screen character nor has scope to do anything except bare and dare) who wants the issue to be kept as a secret from him.

Despite such a usual start to the proceedings, the first half sustains interest because of some silly humour between the hero and his friend (Satya) and the dumb charades the heroine plays with the former.

The curiosity factor is well-maintained at the break when the character of Rajendra Prasad is introduced, he being the dead donor of Tarun’s eyes. Having dared to show the hero with a handicap and keeping him grounded, the writer director Veligonda Srinivas lapses into a masala mindset and turns the movie into a routine revenge drama, where the bad guy Raja Ravindra, with an impressive performance shoring him up pretty well, is taken apart in the climax.

Why this relentless blood and gore happens is narrated in yet another flashback, which confirms the risk aversion that the director indulges in with his film, which mars its watchability and dilutes its uniqueness.

Added to this formulistic treatment are the interpolations in the form of dream songs in foreign locations, the speed breakers, which ups the sizzle for the front benchers as Heeba Patel indulges in liberal skin show.

Hollywood has done it for years now and Hindi cinema too has depicted its protagonists as physically challenged yet using their superior brain power to outwit their tormentors.

A recent release like Hrithik Roshan’s ‘Kaabil’ comes to mind, in which the hero is shown blind till the last. Telugu cinema, stuck in a time warp and content churning out farcical, make-believe potboilers is yet to dare in this regard, which is actually a sorry state of affairs for sure.

Film Name : Andhadagu

Cast : Raj Tarun, Hebah Patel, Raja Ravindra
Direction : Veligonda Srinivas
Genre : Revenge Drama
Likes : Comic tone to the film
Dislikes : Second half