Review: Boss Isn’t Back, but He’s on the Way With ‘Khaidi No. 150’

Chiranjeevi is back to doing what he does best.

It had been a while since I had seen a Telugu film on the big screen. So I got my Telugroove on, economy class tickets, arrived early, and bought popcorn. I grinned through the confetti and yelled with the fans when Chiranjeevi leapt onto the screen after a 10-year hiatus. Well met, Megastar, well met. It was then that I realised someone was stealing my popcorn. A toddler had begun grabbing saliva-sticky fistfuls while his parents sat hypnotised by the screen. It was a sign.

I grinned through the confetti and yelled with the fans when Chiranjeevi leapt onto the screen after a 10-year hiatus.

I had been really looking forward to the movie. Kaththi, the Tamil blockbuster of which Khaidi No. 150 is a remake, was tremendous fun. It managed to pack an emotional punch as well. And well, with an emotive actor like Chiranjeevi, the possibilities were limitless.

The first shot was of Chiru wading through the grass outside a Kolkata prison. I realised that he was supposed to be running. Later, he asks his jailer for chewing gum. ‘Why chewing gum?’ the policeman asks. ‘Attitude’, Chiru replies, with a jiggle of his sagging body. Later, he appeared in a CGI whirlwind at his old partner’s house. More youthful banter. He eyes Kajal Agarwal and declares she’s his childhood sweetheart.

One fact painfully obvious to us, the audience, and which the filmmakers were obviously oblivious to – is that the Megastar isn’t young anymore.

The frustrating bit was that he didn’t have to be. Even Vijay, who starred in the original, portrayed a character older than Khaidi’s. My popcorn was fast disappearing. I didn’t dare touch the tub.

There still was hope. There were three things to look forward to – 1. This was a double role, and the other, Chiranjeevi was supposed to be the ‘serious’ person. 2. This was an action film, so he gets to beat up thugs with satisfying thuds and crashes, and 3. Dance.

The other Chiranjeevi was serious, but rather underwhelming. There’s betrayal by evil corporates, farmer suicide, and police brutality in the story, ample room to leave Vijay’s convincing - but conventional - emoting in the dust. But no joy.

If the filmmakers wanted to keep it light, then farmer suicide probably wasn’t the right plot core. Good old fashioned revenge, or the emancipation of a village from a big bad oppressor, would have been ideal.

Chiru allows the make-up artist to do more than he does. Ah well, there’s the fights to look forward to.

Now Chiranjeevi is a big guy, capable of roaring angry better than most. There were three or four excellent sequences, faithfully rendered from the original. One, in which he dispatches two truckloads of thugs with a handful of coins, a welded metal rod, and a mains switch. But we don’t quite feel the force, the impact.

And then there was an item song, and he hit the dance floor. It’s like a lion seal flapped around on land for a bit and then slid into the water. Nobody does item numbers like Telugu. Sorry Bollywood, you guys are too airbrushed and… tight.

When the first song comes on, Lakshmi Rai looks at Chiranjeevi and makes a two-second, audio-enhanced move that says – my clothes can’t contain me anymore. I need to come undone. I’m guessing the censors were too busy ogling to mark that spot. In the final song – Ammadu, Let’s Do Kummudu (babe, let’s do something…pneumatic), he goes all out, toe to toe with Ram Charan, an incredible dancer himself. The guest appearance served to show that the Megastar still got the moves. If only the music could keep up.

Kaththi’s theme music – for both hero and villain – were powerful. The songs were memorable, and Anirudh’s re-recording was spot-on. Devi Sri Prasad’s uninspired stuff took something away from the fights and ‘mass’ moments, particularly because the instrumentation and tone were half-hearted rip-offs of the original. Chiranjeevi managed to dance to those inane tunes, with a gorgeous but mostly jobless Kajal Agarwal in tow.

I felt sorry for Kajal. We all know how the star hogs all the screen time in star vehicles, but the heroine’s role was little more than a cameo. No one seems to pay her any attention, least of all the hero. At one time, he asks her if she likes ‘class’ or ‘mass’. She chooses the latter. And promptly there’s a ‘class’ song, set in foreign locales, surrounded by white-skinned extras, dancing to a decidedly non-mass song.

But it’s hard to not like a cheerfully self-referencing Chiru on screen. He says, ‘from gully politics to Delhi politics, I’ve endured it all’, or when the full name of the other Chiranjeevi is revealed in court – Konidela Siva Shankar - the name the Megastar was born with. Always a convincing orator, he chewed up reams of alliterative Telugu dialogue in the second half with gusto.

This wasn’t the best of remakes or the best of Chiranjeevi by any stretch, but as far as comebacks go, it more than carries the expectations of generations of fans who want to see their idol do what he does best.

I’m actually looking forward to what he does next. The end credits showed him hanging out with the cast and crew from Bahubali 2. What a movie that would be. S.S. Rajamouli, Chiranjeevi, and music by anyone but Devi Sri Prasad.