Love, lust, murder, a heady cocktail

Dove
Kannada (A),Cast: Anup, Aditi Rao, Rakesh, Rangayana Raghu, Avinash, Jai Jagadish, Sharat Lohitsava, Rakesh
Director: Santhu

Dove, the launch pad of producer Sa Ra Govindu’s son Anup, is basically a feel-good flick. A cushy, cupid saga, where Anup, a simple middle class boy, practical and daring, falls for the elfin charms of Aditi, daughter of a no-nonsense lawyer Vivekananda. That Anup warms his way into Aditi’s innocent and childlike heart through her darling dog Pinchu is another matter.

Against this main romantic track, director Santhu contrasts it with another daring, raunchy, and lustfully physical romance in Sona and Bar Kumar, a perpetual drunkard, high on drugs. Incidentally, this part is inspired by a similar real-life tale where a beau was murdered on the Domlur-Koramangala Ring Road whose betrothed was having an affair with another.

Through this twin track, director Santhu seeks to drive home the point that there is more to falling in love and being blissfully in romance than mere lust and physical attraction. Even as one warmed up to the docile and dutiful and bold and banal sides of attractions between men and women, director Santhu needlessly sidetracks it into a murder plot.

That these actions happen against the backdrop of Kolar’s Cyanide Hills, where four bike-borne youths, led by their  leader Paper Seena, are engaged in nefarious gold smuggling and robbing people of their cash, driven as these people are by bullion craze, are needless distractions.

How Anup is jailed for a murder he does not commit, and CCB officer Prabhu’s son Rahul is murdered following his engagement to Sona who is against it, and the culprits are finally booked and cupid couple Anup-Aditi come together, forms rest of Dove.

While Anup and Aditi try to give out their best, it is Arjun Janya’s music, coming up with some pleasing songs, which make Dove a decent watch to sit and bear. Otherwise, Dove, where seasoned veterans deliver, has nothing much by way of an engaging entertainer. It is purely time-pass for lovebirds who can indulge in themselves with Dove as excuse to spend time in togetherness in the darkened
theatre.