Review: Pawan Kalyan, Daggubati's Bheemla Nayak is a Tom & Jerry Game For Adults

In a career spanning more than a quarter of a century, Pawan Kalyan has starred in many remakes and most of them have gone on to become blockbusters. But Bheemla Nayak will perhaps find a special place in that list, for it won’t stop being entertaining even after a few decades.

Ayyappanum Koshiyum (2020), the Malayalam drama on which this Telugu remake is based, is a perfect feast that serves ego on a plantain leaf. And Bheemla Nayak uses that theme as an elevator pitch to shoot up the temperature and leaves the protagonists, of which Rana Daggubati plays one, bleeding and seething.

Nayak (Kalyan), the eponymous character, is a cop who follows the rulebook usually. He doesn’t like it when his subordinates humiliate the accused. And even when the wrongdoer abuses the men in khaki, he tries to defuse the situation. That, however, doesn’t mean he’s a peace lover. He picks up the lathi at every given opportunity.

For the poor, Nayak is a saviour. And for the people who run bars, he’s an enemy. Stars that occupy the upper layer of Telugu cinema are chiefly portrayed as angels in disguise. If the introduction song, picturized on the hero, doesn’t include messages for the society at large, then it’ll definitely have a canto containing how powerful he is.

In Bheemla Nayak, Saagar K. Chandra, the director, goes out of his way to show a bunch of criminals that Nayak has caught via the first song. It’s a farcical experiment that doesn’t do Nayak and his minions any justice.

I found this little episode to be jarring and wished the song had, instead, been about the revenge plan being devised by Danny (Daggubati).

First of all, Daggubati’s character is placed on an equal pedestal, if not higher. Danny’s erasure from the title remains just that and nothing more. You can say it’s a Pawan Kalyan film at the end of the day. But, thankfully, the discourse on the remake will involve Danny to the same extent as Nayak because without yin, there’s no yang. And without a villain, there’s no hero.

Also, Danny isn’t a typical villain – he’s somewhat of a man with grey shades though. He’s arrogant and thinks that the world revolves around him. And his arrogance obviously stems from the fact that he has the phone numbers of politicians saved on his mobile. When he’s dragged to a police station for possessing liquor above the permissible amount and causing a ruckus, he doesn’t care about the consequences. He doesn’t feel sorry for the state he’s in, either. He probably lives in his own world where he dances to his own tunes. It must be a jolly land – and it must be filled with folks like him.

What do you think happens when these two people find themselves at two ends of a long rope? Nayak is definitely not the one that has committed a crime here. But he doesn’t mind crossing the legal borders for what he feels is his right. There’s a great scene where Danny, during an altercation, mentions that he can shout louder than Nayak. And it’s true. Daggubati can reach heaven with his voice alone. Some of these lines are quite funny, as they are intentionally written for the actors and not the characters they’re portraying.

There’s even a monologue in the end where Nayak praises himself by mouthing tiny sentences that end with words that rhyme. Trivikram must have had a wonderful time coming up with such tongue teasers. But when he distributes his bag of tricks to all the characters, all the men and women tend to sound the same. That’s a problem he needs to look into. On a surface level, the dialogues he writes tend to dive into our heads easily, but they sometimes lack an emotional core. Rhymes and slogans cannot work as answers to everything.

Kalyan’s previous release, Vakeel Saab (2021), was also a remake. However, he stood taller than the script there. But in Bheemla Nayak, there’s room for the narrative to roam and grow. And the reason is not limited to Danny’s solid presence, or the way in which Kalyan uses his action star image to tip the scales in his favour.

Several things come together to make the movie enjoyable. And Thaman, the composer, stands at the forefront for sure. His background score will keep your feet tapping.

Then there’s Nithya Menen who plays Nayak’s wife, Suguna. She deserves a spin-off where she manages to send a dozen extras flying while Nayak takes care of their crying baby.

I don’t know if there’ll ever be a sequel to Bheemla Nayak. But if the project materialises someday, I hope to watch Danny and Nayak share their childhood stories in a military hotel.