Sirisha gets ready to be married and even chats up her groom before zooming off, leading DIG Rudresh Gowda on a wild goose chase. A distracted Gowda chances upon Hari, whom he had last dispatched off to the cells, striding purposefully towards him.

Hari disables Gowda’s car and before the latter can recover, makes good his escape astride Sirisha’s bike while pumping a couple of bullets into Gowda’s chest. So is it all “Shubham” at the end then?

The film is a heady mix of love, drama, comedy and of course, revenge. Ayyappa P Sharma takes his time getting the hang of the film, but the plot takes over the second half pretty well. Rajesh Kata’s camerawork appears too busy but suffices.

Varadanayaka brings Sudeep and Chiranjeevi Sarja before Kannada audience one and two years after their previous Kannada releases respectively.

With a powerful role, Sudeep flexes his acting muscles to the most pleasing effect—shrieks and seetis accompany each dialogue and the dishoom-dishoom punch much before they leave the actor! Indeed, Sudeep towers above the rest — scorching even Chiranjeevi’s hard work as the younger brother, till the time he is onscreen.

It is only in the remaining scenes of the second half that Chiranjeevi comes into his own but it’s a little late by then.

Nikesha Patel, reprising Anushka’s role in the original, gets more screentime here and shows more gumption than required during the lip-lock or other pout-worthy occasions. A diction coach would do wonders for this actress.

 Ravishankar’s menace is intact, without descending to irritating levels. Shobhraj revels in his bumbling-idiot-aide role, while Sharath Lohitashwa, Mukhyamantri Chandru, Padmaja Rao, Jai Jagadish, Sathyajit, Chitra Shenoy, Dharma and others have precious little to do.

Sameera Reddy, after pleasing turns in films like Varanam Aayiram for one, debuts in Kannada and gets Rebel Star and his beautiful actress wife Sumalatha introduce her eye-catching number “baithe.. baat karlenge” (set to tune by the irrepressible Arjun Janya) with the red-hot Sudeep.

She also has the luxury of getting the correct artiste to dub her voice though only for around 100 words. But her new slim look is almost lost with a blink-n-miss role –- she’s left literally holding a baby! But was she necessary for THIS film? 

Varadanayaka leaves behind questions like these, but for fans of Sudeep, nothing matters. Their idol delivers.