Patience pays while hunting

Kote brings a dose of relief - both Srinivas Raju and Prajwal have pulled up their socks and their effort is backed by a generous producer. Kote is nowhere close to, say, Prithvi, but does create a few moments of its own, only to be frittered away the next instant. Phir bhi, the screenplay sticks, piecing together scenes from several other films.

Raghu Dixit’s music offers little freshness except for the ‘item’ song involving ‘performer’ Rachna Maurya and another ditty.

Gururaj Desai does a commendable job with dialogues though some of them are slighlty unpalatable. Mendonca and Lakra do a good job with the background score.

Ditto A C Mahendran with the camera. Prajwal has improved leaps and bounds with Kote, bringing newfound maturity and subtlety to the table. His squeaky voice doesn’t match up to his Dynamic Star father, who had made the Khaki his second skin. Still, Junior makes the uniform his own for the short duration he wears it in the film.

Ravi Shankar has screen presence which vanishes the moment he opens his stained mouth - the heavy Telugu accent and laborious pauses harm his dialogue delivery. The fights are good, with a liberal helping of bloodspill. Overall, Kote brings fresh promise to Prajwal Devaraj’s career.