The massy Puri Jagan gives an Entertaining Shankar but not without some clumsiness.
Rating : 2.5/5
Tagline : Limitless Massssss...
Tagline : Limitless Massssss...
Puri Jagan is currently rolling on a flop ride with a series of recent flops while Ram is still searching for that one role which opens him the mass market. Well, who better than Puri can do that. Let’s see how this combo worked out.
Shankar is a paid goon in Hyderabad who kills a famous politician Kasi Vishwanath for money. He happens to fall madly in love with Chandini (Nabha Natesh) in the process. Since the police are behind shankar for the murder, he goes to Goa for hiding with his girlfriend Chandini where the police find him but kill Chandini while chasing the couple. Shankar wants to kill the cop who killed Chandini and hence comes back to Hyderabad only to find out that his uncle who assigned him the murder compramized him to the cops. Arun (Satya Dev) is a CBI agent who investigates this murder and finds that there are some big people involved in the murder. His love interest is Sarah who's a neuroscientist experimenting on a memory transfer between two brains. In a turn of events, Arun gets murdered and to get the information about the murder in Arun's brain, a memory transfer of his brain is done to Shankar by Sarah. Will she be successful in doing it? What happens to Shankar and his memories? Who actually plotted the murder of Kasi Vishwanath?
For starters, Ram Pothineni has always done lover boy roles in the industry and the character Shankar gives him a new lease of life in Tollywood. He has done an outstanding job as Shankar. It is very tough playing Shankar with that sort of dialogue delivery but Ram impresses in every scene. His dance moves were excellent and due credit to Puri for looking at this side of Ram as well. Nabha Natesh as Chandini is one cute entertainer. For a non-telugu actress to portray Chandini is not easy and she's done a tremendous job. Every scene she's in is an eye candy for the audience. Nidhi Agerwal as Sara is good but she still has a long way to go as a complete actress on the silver screen. Satya Dev as Arun was impressive. Shiyaji Shinde and Ashish Vidyarthi are seen on the Telugu screen after a long time. Getup Seenu gets an extended role.
Puri Jagan has a template of narration on how to start the movie and he does exactly that with ismart shankar. The hero introductory fight scene has limitless one-liners from Ram in the telangana accent irrespective of whether they are relevant or not. He takes the first half in a little pacy manner with a lot of story going on which is a bit unlike Puri. The love story between Shankar and Chandini was very well shot but it ends too soon to the audience liking. There's some good fun scenes between the pair. At the end of first half, he introduces the memory transfer into Shankar's brain.
The second half starts in a funny way with Shankar realizing something's wrong with his brain. But the narration loses direction midway with some clumsy scenes where the hero is all over the place but Puri tries to cover it up with Shankar having the memories of Chandini and slows the pace down a little. There are some good scenes here and there but the second half goes flat after a certain point and you lose interest as it gets too predictable.
Puri Jagan is known for his mass way of taking films and he has taken that to a whole different level with this movie. He goes all in in showcasing his mass film making talent. But the emotions in the movie can be hardly felt. He doesn't hold back in showing both the actresses' skin show. Every costume of the actresses appeal the mass audience in their own way. The BGM by Mani Sharma right from the title screen till the end are of high value. Couple of songs are really catchy as well. The production values and cinematography were decent. The climax was way too slow and is dragged too long just to show the body of hero Ram which is highly unnecessary. All in all, if you are a fan of out and out mass masala movies with tested formula, you'll like iSmart shankar since it's been a long time Tollywood has seen a mass entertainer. If not, please stay away from it.
- Chaitanya Somavajhala (@ChaitanSrk)
Shankar is a paid goon in Hyderabad who kills a famous politician Kasi Vishwanath for money. He happens to fall madly in love with Chandini (Nabha Natesh) in the process. Since the police are behind shankar for the murder, he goes to Goa for hiding with his girlfriend Chandini where the police find him but kill Chandini while chasing the couple. Shankar wants to kill the cop who killed Chandini and hence comes back to Hyderabad only to find out that his uncle who assigned him the murder compramized him to the cops. Arun (Satya Dev) is a CBI agent who investigates this murder and finds that there are some big people involved in the murder. His love interest is Sarah who's a neuroscientist experimenting on a memory transfer between two brains. In a turn of events, Arun gets murdered and to get the information about the murder in Arun's brain, a memory transfer of his brain is done to Shankar by Sarah. Will she be successful in doing it? What happens to Shankar and his memories? Who actually plotted the murder of Kasi Vishwanath?
For starters, Ram Pothineni has always done lover boy roles in the industry and the character Shankar gives him a new lease of life in Tollywood. He has done an outstanding job as Shankar. It is very tough playing Shankar with that sort of dialogue delivery but Ram impresses in every scene. His dance moves were excellent and due credit to Puri for looking at this side of Ram as well. Nabha Natesh as Chandini is one cute entertainer. For a non-telugu actress to portray Chandini is not easy and she's done a tremendous job. Every scene she's in is an eye candy for the audience. Nidhi Agerwal as Sara is good but she still has a long way to go as a complete actress on the silver screen. Satya Dev as Arun was impressive. Shiyaji Shinde and Ashish Vidyarthi are seen on the Telugu screen after a long time. Getup Seenu gets an extended role.
Puri Jagan has a template of narration on how to start the movie and he does exactly that with ismart shankar. The hero introductory fight scene has limitless one-liners from Ram in the telangana accent irrespective of whether they are relevant or not. He takes the first half in a little pacy manner with a lot of story going on which is a bit unlike Puri. The love story between Shankar and Chandini was very well shot but it ends too soon to the audience liking. There's some good fun scenes between the pair. At the end of first half, he introduces the memory transfer into Shankar's brain.
The second half starts in a funny way with Shankar realizing something's wrong with his brain. But the narration loses direction midway with some clumsy scenes where the hero is all over the place but Puri tries to cover it up with Shankar having the memories of Chandini and slows the pace down a little. There are some good scenes here and there but the second half goes flat after a certain point and you lose interest as it gets too predictable.
Puri Jagan is known for his mass way of taking films and he has taken that to a whole different level with this movie. He goes all in in showcasing his mass film making talent. But the emotions in the movie can be hardly felt. He doesn't hold back in showing both the actresses' skin show. Every costume of the actresses appeal the mass audience in their own way. The BGM by Mani Sharma right from the title screen till the end are of high value. Couple of songs are really catchy as well. The production values and cinematography were decent. The climax was way too slow and is dragged too long just to show the body of hero Ram which is highly unnecessary. All in all, if you are a fan of out and out mass masala movies with tested formula, you'll like iSmart shankar since it's been a long time Tollywood has seen a mass entertainer. If not, please stay away from it.
- Chaitanya Somavajhala (@ChaitanSrk)