The regular NTR tainer

Name : Rabhasa
Cast : NTR, Samantha and Pranitha Subhash
Direction : Santosh Srinivas
Genre : Action
Rating : **
Like : Brahmanandam
UnLike : Text and treatment

It is paradigm: take it or leave it. In the midst of disaster that is nearer to Hiroshima and could make Rohit Shetty look like Dalai Lama – we have – not Rajini, not Salman – but NTR. Now that is perfect example of the paradigm. This package has an audience that defies the rain and the Pooja schedule. The guy seated next is delirious. Not a scene is complete, but his emotions are difficult to contain. The star, his star is full blast on screen, bashing up the baddies with physics defying, logic challenging power. That is the ‘wow moment’. Bellamkonda Suresh knows that his star is the insurance for his money. There is a fan-club that defies logic and perpetuates a commitment. It is in this operative structure that you analyse ‘Rabhasa’.

Karthik (NTR) is the ‘flexi-Samaritan’. He is a ‘one-man-service’ available on call; beating up goons in a style that leaves the entire gang not just beaten and dazed but running for cover. In a chanced encounter, he has beaten to pulp a gang of strong men. The victim (Shravan) is in coma. Wanting to wreak vendetta are his other brothers Ajay, Amit and Ravi Prakash. In the city are the D brothers. Big bro Dhananjay (Shayaji Shinde) is hoping to be the Mayor while his other brothers (Brahmaji and Bharat) are goons and specialists in beating up people, attacking the normal citizenry and are just the guys who make preventive detention laws popular. Karthik’s parents (Nasser and Jayasudha) believe he is in USA. Actually he is in Hyderabad to avenge the insult heaped on his parents by his maternal uncle Dhananjay and woo his daughter Indu (Samantha). An initial misunderstanding leads to Karthik believing that his childhood fiancé is Bhagyam (Pranitha). A long spell of song, dance etc., leads to clearing the decks for the possible romance between Indu and Karthik. Indu feigns love for Karthik and since she does not want to marry the groom selected by dad, she is on the run and would use Karthik for the same. On the run they land up in the village where there is a dispute for 1000 acres of land between Peddi Reddy (Jaya Prakash Reddy) and Gangi Reddy (Bapineedu). The former’s daughter has a hijacked marriage. There are wheels within wheels and while everyone including Peddi Reddy are on the lookout for the guy who got Shravan into a state of coma, Karthik is well in the camp. You have the usual scene of large families where everyone is slowly but steadily changing their support for him. In to this bedlam is introduced Brahmanandam as the guy who beat up Shravan.

In the post interval narration for about 45 minutes it is Brahmanandam who takes the film under his control. Those are the moments of the film. Yet again he delivers a punch-filled performance and holds the interest of the audience. He ensures that the script does not fall apart. It is awesome that he can do the same thing time and again and yet hold the interest of the viewer. The film is a salute to the skill sets of this awesome actor.

NTR functions from a very defined territory and must thus be evaluated from there or not at all. I find it convenient to choose the latter. Samantha has things going her way presently. However, the day she decides to examine her body of work, I repeat body of work, she could blush red that could pale in compare her gaudy make up. Pranitha Subhash must stick to her silk saree selling commercials. The veteran gang is as safe as they usually are. The film, however, belongs exclusively to the dynamism of Brahmanandam. One sample of the many dialogues from the central character: Nenu ichinappudu teeskunte bharosa, lekapote rabhasa.

Rarely does a film justify its title as aptly as this one.