Akharleni
Arupulu Kekalu & Gola - `Akhanda -2’
(Review
by S. Prabhakar)
There is a हिंदी मुहावरा"आ बैल मुझे मार" (Aa bail mujhe maar) (which
means inviting trouble to ourselves).
Going to a Balayya movie is nothing less than that. Most of the Non Balayya fans (which
includes me) very well know that we can hardly expect anything new or different
from his movies. Sometimes, though we
know a movie (almost every movie of Balayya) could be bad, we still dare to
check to see how bad it is. In his
entire career, there were 3-4 movies of Balayya which I could tolerate, and
Akhanda-1 is one of them. Going by
Akhanda-1, that too the Akhanda role and the high hype given as saviour of
Sanathana Dharma, I thought Boyapati-Balayya magic may work one more time. But it is far from it and the die-hard Jai
Balayya Brigade can only stomach whatever has been churned by Boyapati-Balayya
combo.
As a concept, the topic chosen is not bad - Chinese joining hands with a corrupt politician
whose father has lost power and son trying to grab power at any cost including
dividing Hindus and making them lose faith in Hinduism (any resemblances to
Rahul Gandhi is not a coincidence). He
lets loose a virus in Maha Khumb Mela and tries to shake the faith of Hindus by
propagating that God has not come to their rescue and our Akhanda not only saves
the anti-dot to the virus but also gives liberal sermons on Hindutva, Sanatana
Dharma. However, the execution falters,
and there is hardly anything to hold the audience's attention. Like Rajni movie directors, KGF and Sallar
directors, Boyapati also suffers from his fixation on elevations. How far can one be satisfied by stupid
elevations, which are always larger than life and, beyond one point get on to
your nerves.
The good concept has not developed well due to a lack of depth in the story, poor dialogue writing, and poor delivery by Balayya, full of stuttering, coupled with his brand of shouting and yelling without expressions or emotional depth in acting. we cannot expect Balayya to deliver simple Telugu dialogue coherently; how can we expect him to deliver Sanskrit dialogue? He and Boyapati can only understand and appreciate, added to it the non-synchronisation of his dialogue delivery with body language and movement makes it a total cartoon caricature. Earlier there was Krishna, who even after acting in over 300 movies, could never improve his still statue-like pose before the camera in a side angle, weak and shivering voice, funny facial expressions in the name of acting and now we have Balayya who has acted in over 100 movies but still could not develop proper synchronisation between his dialogue delivery and body language – the final effect is always like a poorly dubbed Chenese movies of late 70s.
Everything is bad about Akhanda-2 and there is nothing to
write positively about it. Another
fixation Boyapati has is that he has to show two Balayyas, whether required or
not. There is hardly any role or
relevance of the first Balayya in the movie, but he has wasted a good part of the
first half on him, going through routine motions and one dance with the female
lead of less than half his age, who thankfully gets killed and saves us from
any more romantic scenes or songs with robot-like moving Balayya.
The opening with Chenese villains (played well by Bengali
actor Saswat Chatterjee and Bhutani actor Sanjay Tsheltrim) raised some hope which was dashed the moment
the first Balayya enters. The Maha
Khumb mela scenes (looked to be originally shot at the Mahakhumbh Mela) looked
good, but the rest of Leh Ladhakh, Amarnath are all probably shot with green
screen and were poorly executed. Hope
of movie picking up after the entry of Akhanda also did not happen with
mindless elevations, ear-splitting loud dialogue delivery and the Boyapati
Balayya patented curse and abusive words.
What could be more ridiculous than showing PM, HM, NIA helpless and
instead of falling back on our powerful defence forces, hoping and praying that
an Aghora will come and rescue the country.
I read somewhere that Boyapati
and Balayya have screened some scenes to Yogi Adityanath and are saying that PM
has shown interest in the movie and they are planning to show it to PM
also. He will split his hair if he sees
such scenes and our Balayya acting.
The CAG are of pathetic quality, especially the backdrop of
icy mountains, the gun battles and blasts are elementary and look like what we
saw in movies in the 1990s. All the
scenes involving Adi Pinisetty were horribly handled; the scenes of SVR as a black
magician in 70-year-old Patala Bhairavi look far better than in this
movie. Adi Pinisetti is completely
wasted. Thaman, the music director, as
always, is loud; he could not use the Sanskrit slokas well as background
music. Someone like Keeravani could have done
justice. The seasoned action directors
Ram Laxman did a pathetic job, showing throughout the movie with a trishul in
hand Balayya faceing hundreds of Chinese army men with AK-47 and making a dozen
fly in the air and bounce like a football on Balayya thumping his leg or trishul
on the earth. What better can they do
when they have to handle a 65-year-old bulky hero. Normally, people say when you go to a
Boyapati-Balayya combo movie, you should leave your brain and rational thinking
at home, but it seems both of them kept their brains in a deep freezer at home
while going for the shooting of Akhanda-2, Boyapati, as a director, has been a
complete let-down.
Overall, an average movie, which is being dubbed as a blockbuster
in 4 days. Today, in the afternoon show
in Delhi, there were 12 people in a theatre with a capacity of over 350 seats. As MLN says in Aagadu, flop movie directors
hold more success meets. I am absolutely
shocked to listen to Gangadhara Shastry, pravachana karta, going gaga about Boyapati and Balayya as
Karanajanmulu to have made this movie. As if Telugu is not enough, it has been
released in many languages, including Hindi and Boyapati and Balayya made buffoons
of themselves by their murderous Hindi in road shows in Mumbai. After many decades wait, with the efforts of
directors like Rajamouli, Kanaga Raj and Prashant Neel a pan-India market has
been created, but if movies like OG and Akhanda-2 are released in theatres, the
PAN India audience will lose interest in Telugu and South movies. In the
interest of PAN India movies, Boyapati, Balayya, and Pawan Kalyan should spare
the North audience.
Non-Balayya fans are cautioned to stay away from this movie,
even on OTT release. As far as `Jai
Balayya Brigade’ is concerned, they have a lot to lap up and cheer and shout
Jai Balayya in theatres (preferably single screen) till their vocal cords
pain.
S. Prabhakar
16.12.2025
