Saaho Movie Review : A movie that is riding on a tsunami wave of expectations, A storm at the box office is inevitable.

Excellent Performance by Prabhas. Actions Sequences with Top-Notch VFX.

Saaho Movie Review : Saaho – A Prabhas movie that was riding on a tsunami wave of expectations, a storm at the box office is inevitable.

This was Prabhas’ first movie in two years after the blockbuster success of his last film, Baahubali 2.

After much anticipation, Prabhas and Shraddha Kapoor ’s Saaho is finally hitting the theatre screens today.

The makers of Saaho have searched for every rooftop in the arena to go and shout how their film was made on a humongous budget, even beating the Baahubali series.

The trailers which had promised an action extravaganza with a challenge of taking Indian cinema beyond wherever Chandraayan 2 has gone. Not to mention, an eclectic supporting cast featuring who is who from Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Hindi cinema including Bollywood actress Shraddha Kapoor. So yes Saaho has  arrived like a Tsunami at the theatres.

If you go purely by a movie-watching experience, then Saaho has this tendency to destroy every sense of logic in its attempt to make a twisty action spectacle.

Saaho : The Movie –

So Saaho begins in this fictional city called Waaji, that feels like a cross between Dubai and 2019 Los Angeles from Blade Runner. Later in the film, a local cop, played by Evelyn Sharma (whose character description is exactly what that blonde cop from Dhoom 3 had) claims that Waaji has the best police department in the world. And yet the best police department couldn’t figure out that the headquarters of a huge crime conglomerate is under their nose. The narrative gets its first twist, when the kingpin Roy (Jackie Shroff) is killed mysteriously in the first few minutes when he was in Mumbai.

With the king gone, the kingdom is in disarray and many want a stake at the throne, including Roy’s heir Vishwank (Arun Vijay) and his bitter rival Devaraj (Chunky Pandey). Meanwhile back in Mumbai, a series of heists are happening, carried out by a shady conman. To investigate the case, the police department brings in an undercover cop Ashok Chakravarthy (Prabhas) and a Malayali officer Amrutha Nair (Shraddha Kapoor), the latter getting a Kerala theme music for her intro, in case you didn’t get her geography right.

As expected, sparks fly between the two, more twists arrive on the way and the movie jumps from one country to another, with the makers either using real locales or some very obvious green screens.

The final 30 minutes of the film is where things go really explosive. Dozens of cars get destroyed in a car chase that would give Rohit Shetty a competition, the hero gets to save the heroine mid-air in Saaho’s most peak romantic moment and then he ends up bashing dreadnok goons amidst a desert storm. And as the fight ensues, Saaho throws in more twists because there has to be a purpose to this mayhem, right?

It isn’t wrong to have absurdly written twists and over-the-top action sequences. Fast & Furious franchise is making billions of dollars right now, by throwing logic to the wind. However, what separates Saaho from franchises like F&F is the presentation. None of the action sequences in Saaho stands out or feels original, which wasn’t the case with Prabhas’ Baahubali series, whose fight scenes, even if OTT, were immensely memorable. For all the claims of a Rs 300 crore budget, Saaho’s VFX is very average.

The saving graces here are the slick production values and cinematography which help in making the film a very stylish product, sans any kind of substance. The song picturisations are extremely impressive, though I cannot say the same about the placement or the score in itself. Ghibran’s background score is a rare plus for the film, amplifying the thrill element of Saaho to the max.

The Performances :

It was not just on Saaho that the eyes of the nation were eagerly waiting for, but also on Prabhas. Hailed as this decade’s pan-Indian superstar from South, Prabhas has a lot going for in the film, that was perched comfortably on his broad shoulders. Prabhas brings in the charisma and the swagger needed for the role, but his act lacks the flamboyance that we saw in Baahubali series. He plays his character in a very one-note manner, equipped with a lazy drawl for a voice, as if he is suffering from Salman Khan syndrome. A couple of his shirtless scenes does hint towards that direction.

Shraddha Kapoor is quite gorgeous to look at, but her decent performance (her lipsyncing isn’t all bad) is hampered by a poorly written character. Saaho has some very popular names in the supporting cast – Jackie Shroff, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Chunky Pandey, Arun Vijay, Lal, Mandira Bedi, Mahesh Manjrekar, Murali Sharma, Tinnu Anand. Most of them are cast as villains, but only Chunky Pandey and Murali Sharma stand out. Chunky Pandey is quite revelatory as the baddie who hams to the hilt, while Murali Sharma lends in a fine act as the hero’s associate. Comedian Venella Kishore disappears after the first half.

Final Verdict :

Despite the farcical action scenes and twists, Saaho could have entertained you the way many of the masala films in Telugu do. Prabhas has a huge-fanbase, so the movie is expected to take a bumper opening at the box office. But a very dull presentation, shoddy editing and overly complicated narrative, addled by humongous expectations, play the spoilsport here. Forget bringing cinema to the next level, Saaho’s biggest challenge is to stop our interest levels from dropping and it spectacularly fails at that