RGV is back with a bang! He is able to bring alive on screen one of India's Most notorious men, a man who kept the woods of three states under his thumb and terrorized local and national Governments for 20 years in the finest way possible. You can see the director’s stamp in few scenes, where we are reminded of the old RGV, who could do no wrong then. What we really wish is the fact that RGV should have had smarter and better casts in the film, which could have done justice to the roles given to them. It’s a good plot and good effort wasted! The weak star cast and their poor acting makes the movie a miss this weekend.
A society gets the criminal it deserves. A 360-degree camera spin follows this Voltaire quote, and you find yourself surrounded by a dense forest and trumpeting tuskers. This territory belongs to Veerappan, a killing machine who counts LTTE chief Prabhakaran as his inspiration. You wish to know more about this rugged man, and a child appears with a camera mounted over his shoulders. The kid takes you on a time warp and loud background score ensures you remain stuck there for a while. And then you breathe, recognise and realise it is that Ram Gopal Varma touch. Welcome to the world of omnipresent cameras. The basic idea is to present it as a morally ambiguous story where the good can also use evil means, but that isn’t enough. Having said that, this 126-minute film has pace and a narrative technique which may give you a glimpse of RGV’s old charm. But, the mojo isn’t completely back yet.
A society gets the criminal it deserves. Ram Gopal Varma bases his Veerappan on this Voltaire quote. Varma chronicles the life and times of India's most notorious criminal Veerappan in this film. Except, Varma does not. Veerappan has been touted as a biopic, but it is hardly the poacher's life Varma is talking about. Only Sandeep Bhardwaj seems genuinely invested in the film. But sadly, he is allowed neither the space nor the scope to go beyond the ordinary. Varma's Veerappan is a hotchpotch of important incidents at best. At worst... let's not even go there. The director, who had gifted us the brilliant camerawork in Sarkar - the close shots, especially - floods every single frame with the same in Veerappan. During the film, there are several moments when you wish Veerappan would turn his 303 on you and help you escape this torture. John Stewart Eduri's background score works on your eardrums like a pair of hammers. It is only in Aniket Khandagale's cinematography that Veerappan scores a few brownie points. At the end of the day, Veerappan is hardly the redemption Ram Gopal Varma could have hoped for. It is 2.5 hours of unbearable torture.
The fact that director Ram Gopal Varma has been off the boil for a while is known. The story of real-life forest brigand Veerappan, too, is well documented. When the twain meet in the domain of cinematic fancy, is dynamite the result? Not a hope in hell. Veerappan does not shy away from making a great deal of noise, but the film is more akin to soggy gelatin sticks delivering a damp squib than a big explosive device triggering an earth-shattering bang. At no point in the film does one get the impression that RGV might be anywhere near regaining his lost touch. The maker of Satya and Company is nowhere in sight in this messy, pedestrian thriller. Veerappan, as the film tells us upfront, was the most dangerous man who ever existed. It took one of the costliest and most elaborate security operations and a two-decade-long manhunt to eliminate him. This film is another reminder: it is time to launch a manhunt for the Ram Gopal Varma that Bollywood watchers once knew. Or, else, let us just move on just as Hindi cinema has done from the heydays of the gangster flick.
To find an actor who resembles the real-life character he has to play is a stroke of pure luck. But to fritter that away by making that reel-life character so uni-dimensional, so uninteresting is pure misfortune, both for the once terrific director, as well as for us viewers who live in hope for his return. But ‘Veerappan’ , based on his own Kannada ‘Killing Veerappan’, never becomes that film. Bhardwaj is to be seen wreathed in a perpetual snarl, hacking away at human limbs and shooting luckless elephants. The other three who split the rest of the screen time are Joshi, playing the mastermind behind Veerappan’s capture , a slain-by-Veerappan officer’s widow (Ray, unintentionally hilarious) and the outlaw’s wife (Jadhav, far too sympathetic), and they are made to scurry around to little impact. The dizzying camera angles which have marred so many of RGV’s recent outings may have mercifully gone missing but the ear-shattering background music is right there. It is enough to make you want to flee into the forests, even at the risk of running into Veerappan.
Since everything about Veerappan made headlines in his lifetime, the story has no surprises. Also the docu-feature style narrative doesn't have too many edge-of-the seat thrills. But if you are keen and curious, to see the life and times of one of the most dreaded criminals, who twirled his moustache and brandished his gun with equal finesse, Varma provides you that vicarious pleasure. In all fairness, Sandeep brings Veerappan alive and the National Award winner Usha as Muthulakshmi is convincing. Though not in top form, RGV does redeem himself to some degree. And his film does allow you to get up, close and personal with the notorious criminal who made a monkey of the Tamil Nadu and Karnataka Governments, because he knew the loopholes in the system.