GAURAVAM ("NOTHING TO BE PROUD ABOUT")

April 19, 2013

Cast: Allu Sirish, Yami Gautam, Prakash Raj.

Director: Radha Mohan.

When you talk about honour killings to a filmgoer it’s natural if the raw, intense “Mississippi Burning” and it’s equally good Indian version “Aakrosh” come to his mind. But does Gauravam belong to the same league? Not at all!

Set in T. Vennur (a village in Tamilnadu), Gauravam talks about the story of Allu Sirish who comes in search of his classmate Shanmugam ( from a lower caste family) who is believed to have eloped with his girlfriend (from an upper caste family). Prakashraj plays the role of the girlfriend’s father. Nobody in the village, including Prakashraj and Shanmugam’s father, knows about the couple’s whereabouts. Allu Sirish and his friend, along with the help of Lawyer Yaazhini (Yami Gautam), the daughter of a local Communist leader, set out to find Shanmugam and his girlfriend.

If you have already watched “Mississippi Burning” or “Aakrosh” you right away understand the plot, but even otherwise it would not take the average viewer long to figure it out, courtesy the lazy, lacklustre and naive screenplay by Radhamohan. The screenplay is so amateurish that you would not find even a single tense scene in the movie! There is no scope for jokes in a movie of this genre and the bad ones forced into the screenplay are made worse by Allu Sirish who is stone faced most of the time.

The cast consists of a couple of Radhamohan regulars who do a good job. But it’s the actors who have played the role of Shanmugam’s father and his girlfriend’s sister-in-law, though very limited in screenspace, who outshine the rest of the cast. Sadly there are no characters like that of Gene Hackman and Willen Dafoe (in Mississippi Burning) or Ajay Devgan, Akshaye Khanna and Paresh Rawal(in Aakrosh), fiery enough to give you the thrills!Even the antagonists never looking menacing or dangerous.

An amusing yet confusing thing about Radhamohan is his tryst with Punjabis. Yes, you have a Punjabi in this movie as well who plays Allu Sirish’s friend!

The cinematography is so inconsistent that you would wonder if there were two Directors of Photography working. When some scenes are nothing short of visual beauty others look like cheap camera print.

Most of the events that look to good to be true unfold at regular intervals as if they were programmed. Certain scenes are so naively thought about and executed that you will burst out into laughter at the silliness. Towards the end there are a few “so called” discoveries and twists that fall flat on the face! With a lot of gratuitous characters and scenes Gauravam feels longer than it’s runtime of 2 hrs 16 minutes.

Iam giving a 2/5 for Gauravam. It’s clear that Radhamohan has stepped onto a genre that he has no clue about!

Rating Scale (Out of 5)

Less than 2                   -           Unwatchable.

2 to 2.25                      -           Below average.

2.5 to 2.75                   -           Average.

3 to 3.25                     -           Good.

3.5 to 3.75                  -           Really Good.

4 to 4.25                     -           Great.

4.5 and above              -           Extraordinary.