Raja The Great movie review: Ravi Teja starrer tries too hard but fails

Raja The Great
Cast: Ravi Teja, Mehreen Pirzada
Director: Anil Ravipudi
Rating: 1.5/5

The only fresh twist to the Tollywood potboiler formula in this film is the coin toss. Earlier, a one rupee coin would be used, now it’s a 10 rupee coin.

Otherwise, this Ravi Teja, Mehreen Pirzada, Prakash Raj starrer directed by Anil Ravipudi tells the same old story. It is louder than before, tries too hard to be funny, yet fails and takes us back to action sequences where we see men hitting their head against hard surfaces and spurting a lot of blood.

From beginning to end, the film is trying too hard – to make audience laugh and cry – but failing in the end.

The film centers around a cat-and-mouse chase. Unlike films where you see the protagonist chasing the antagonist or vice-versa, here, the villain seeks revenge for his loss. How Ravi Teja, as Raja the Great, enters the fray is banal, neither creative nor crowd pleasing.

The fact that he is blind, but trained to deal with situations like any trained police official, is introduced in bits. From the science of echo, to studying in Braille, director and writer Anil Ravipudi, has tried to reason that a blind man can be a part of police operations. But forced humour embedded in the screenplay has spoilt the flow of the story.

The film’s undoing appears to be in its attempt to churn out a commercial entertainer with an interesting concept. Could it have worked better if the film was completely an action thriller?

The characters are also too many and unremarkable.

The leading lady, Mehreen Pirzada as Lucky, plays a good daughter. Prakash Raj plays the role of her father and Sampath plays the role of Prakash Raj’s friend. The other supporting characters crowd the screen more than adding to the story. Even the antagonist doesn’t have a strong presence.

Again, in trying to convince the audience, most of the scenes come across as overly dramatic. Unnecessary subplots takes out attention away from the main story.

The action scenes are initially what one has come to expect out of a stereotyped Telugu film. It gets a little better, and takes a turn for the worse – sample gems such as running an operation from atop a train with the help of Google assistant, cutting fruits in the air with a sharp sword and more.

After a stretch of such stunts comes the ending that could not have come soon enough. If this was a try at spoofing action films, it was a bad one. If this was a try at action comedy, the film needs to strike a balance.

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