Ravanasura(Prime Video)
Rating: * ½
Just how awful canan actor get on screen in trying to touch those emotional chords which are way out of his range? Dial R for Ravi Teja to see the hammiest interpretation of a serial killer ever in Indian cinema.
When we first meet him in this obnoxious crime thriller Teja playing a lawyer (everyone calls him ‘Advocate Ravindra’ like ‘Doctor Dolittle’) Ravindra is seen behaving in a most improper manner with a female colleague.In normal terms Ravindra’s behaviour would be called stalking . But since he is played by Ravi Teja we are supposed to giggle at his antics.
Then comes the first stinging salvo. Ravindra is actually a serial killer . Before can swallow this , we are swept in a sewage of sickening slaying.To carry out his various well planned murders Advocate Ravindra kidnaps the girlfriend of a prosthetics expert Saketh(Sushant) and then implements his murderous plans in masks disguised as different characters.
All this is meant to be extremely smart homicidal behaviour.But in Ravi Teja’s hands , Ravindra’s killing spree turn into a joke.
While murdering one of victims he “pretends” to rape her and then sprinkles semen samples of another man around her.This is meant to fool the forensic department. All I can say is, the film gets the forensic it deserves.
Unintentionally hilarious Ravanusura actually has the temerity to inform us that it is a remake of a Srijit Mukherjee’s Bengali thriller Vinci Da which starred the magnificent Ritwick Chakraborty as the serial killer. Did Ravi Teja watch the original? And he still considers himself an actor?
Tejaa’s interpretation of the troubled killer is rhythm-less and soul-less.He trapezes from giggly banter to acute violence as if he was on some highly dangerous banned drug.
Pharma-crime is what the film is finally about. Eventually all of ‘Advocate’ Ravindra’s brutal crimes are justified by ‘Writer-Director’ Sudheer Verma who seems to think Teja is some kind of an Telugu Joaquin Phoenix. Sadly, Teja brings down the film’s already-wobbly quotient of credibility even further. His attempts to blend burlesque with evil are plainly corny.
As for the narrative’s ambitions to combine a serial-killer thriller with a message on pharmaceutical ethics, we can only say, some other time.