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Cast: Shivarajkumar, Ragini Dwivedi, Rangayana Raghu, Ravishankar and others
Director: N Omprakash Rao
It’s been more than a year after his 100th film Jogaiah and Shivarajkumar is back with another tale of vengeance in Shivaa. Slick and fast-paced, Shivaa entertains the masses with lip-smacking dialogues, though horse lovers have to suffer some disappointment, despite Satya Hegde’s roving camera capturing the race course pretty well.
The plot pays only a fleeting glance at emotions — no place for subtlety here — while indulging in deifying the hero as much as possible. But this exercise at building a larger-than-life persona for Shivanna overshadows other departments. The background music scores over Gurukiran’s songs that are rich in conception, composition and perfectly executed.
Action is almost Shivamayam but for the derring-do of a certain Ethan Hunt of the Mission Impossible series or our Telugu biddas, lighting up many a Tollywood no-brainer.
Ragini fits the bill perfectly in the Omprakash scheme of things — care should have been paid to flexing her facial muscles as well. Ravishankar and Gurudutt pale before Shivanna (obviously), but Raghu lowers the bar for disgust with his hamming. Shobhraj and Bullet Prakash are sincere in their insignificant comedy track. Chitra Shenoy had no business being in the film.
The film’s artwork is nothing to complain about except reminding the audience of several recent releases — even the temple bell blows are losing their novelty in terms of action.
The narration races away, not caring if any sense can be made of each sequence. Omprakash and Deepu S Kumar goof up just before the start of songs. Not that the recording quality is exceptional. Shivaa can be watched for Shivanna, Satya Hegde’s camera work, the fights and dialogues sprinkled with atrocious Telugu. And of course Ragini. The story is a non-entity here.
One of the ideals of Lord Shiva is non-permanence. Shivaa subscribes to this throughout — nothing remains in the mind.