Toothless and directionless

This is an ode to friendship made so famous by the Jai - Veeru and Dharam - Veer types. Now this theme has been done to death by the strength of repetition over the decades. ‘Iddaru Mithrulu’ and ‘Gundamma Katha’ are perhaps the lead in Tollywood. One would believe that a person who embarks on dealing with a stated statement would like to improvise on it or in the alternative at least take a more stylised stance. No such pretensions infuse Anand, the filmmaker, who manages to get together good technical support for ‘Tiger’.

The film revolves round two orphan boys Tiger and Vishnu who have a great bonding. However, Vishnu gets lucky when a couple Kasi Vishwanath and his wife come to the orphanage and take him in adoption. Tiger stalks Vishnu to the city and out of the orphanage to keep in touch. However, early in life their paths go differently. Vishnu (Rahul Ravindran) is now a well educated guy with a job in an IT company whereas Tiger (Sundeep Kishan) prefers to hang around in Rajahmundry. Vishnu falls in love with Ganga (Seerat Kapoor) from Varanasi. How they fall in love through an initial moment of nays is as contrived as a love story on campus can be at Tollywood. Soon we have Tiger walking in with fire and fury. He over hears Ganga tell her friend that she belongs to a family of thugs who will not accept the alliance of Vishnu and Ganga. Soon we have Tiger put his foot down and try hard to crack the budding romance. When Ganga and Vishnu decide to elope all hell break outs in Varanasi. We suddenly have gun wielding guys all over the place with unkempt faces and uncared bodies trying to be at their villainous best. The entire narration starts with Vishnu suffering a designed road accident and blood oozing as if it were a leak from a ketchup factory and he is taken on a taxi to the nearest government hospital.

Tiger who just a while ago was told off by the love pair to stay away from their lives has to return to the scene to salvage the love story, the script and the action.

So unbelievably incredulous is the tale that you keep yawning at every predictable thrill that the filmmaker has for you. You desperately hope that there is some innovation around the corner. There is absolutely none in store. The film revolves round the three principal characters and some strained humour coming from Thagubothu Ramesh­­-- the lone bright spot in the film.

Rahul Ravindran simply does not show the magic required to take a love story ahead. In fact the dead pan expression when he is being taxied in a semi-comatose state seems to be his favourite expression. Seerat Kapoor apes the flavour of the season­­--Kangana Ranaut in looks. Well she does not believe that the script requires her to act too! The film is to be shouldered by Sundeep Kishan and if that is the horse you want to bet than you end up paying the price. If not in ferocity in the erroneous zone of danger the title justifies the film.

L Ravichander