‘Senapathi’ movie review: Rajendra Prasad, Naresh Agastya impress in this fairly engrossing crime drama

A cop loses his official pistol, which adjustments arms at a tempo that’s robust to trace. A sequence of murders rock the town. The premise lends itself to an edge-of-the-seat thriller that can provide us a glimpse into the police procedures and the working of the crime community because the cop races in opposition to time to seek out the gun and save his job.

Senapathi is a Telugu adaptation of the 2017 Tamil movie 8 Thottakkal (eight bullets) written and directed by Sri Ganesh, which was in flip loosely impressed by Akira Kurosowa’s Stray Canine (1949). What offers the crime drama an edge are the backstories of the cop Krishna (Naresh Agasthya) and the person on the different finish, Krishna Murthy (Rajendra Prasad), together with smaller tales of different characters caught on this tussle.

The in a position technical staff and Shravan Bharadwaj’s background rating maintain the environment brooding and gritty because the movie traverses the maze-like conduits of crime within the bylanes of Hyderabad.

The opening parts introduce us to Krishna, a boy who’s framed by his employer and a cop for a homicide he didn’t commit and despatched to a juvenile dwelling. The jail warden instils in him a way of hope and encourages him to develop into a policeman, moderately than be overcome by bitterness. Narrated in black and white, these parts set up the honest cop Krishna’s character and make us empathise together with his angst when his eight-bullet Bruni pistol goes lacking.

Krishna has steered away from bitterness, however what occurs if somebody a lot older who has persistently borne the brunt of a flawed system, is pushed to the sting? That contrasting character, Krishna Murthy, can’t outrightly be labelled black or white. We meet Krishna Murthy a lot later, after the cops have navigated the town’s crime community and thrown up their arms declaring that it’s robust to trace the pistol if it has gone into the arms of a typical man.

In his introduction scene, we don’t get a transparent view of Krishna Murthy. However we hear his voice. A voice that we regularly affiliate with comedian or paternal character roles. The sense of respectability and geniality in his voice is shattered by the darker act that he’s concerned in. Rajendra Prasad is a superb alternative for the function and he offers it his all, shifting simply between being an ageing household man who’s perceived to be a burden and somebody who doesn’t hesitate to kill.

In a scene that seems random at first, he asserts the significance of a ‘senapathi’ in a recreation of chess. Later, as extra layers to his character are revealed, the assertion assumes better significance. In a tangential reference, his character additionally jogged my memory of ‘Senapathy’, the character performed by Kamal Haasan in director Shankar’s Indian (1996).

Whereas Rajendra Prasad steals the present, additionally making a mark is Naresh Agastya, talking little or no however successfully conveying the urgency as he realises the magnitude of the crimes being dedicated together with his pistol.

A few of the smaller characters that act because the cog within the wheel of this crime drama even have their very own little story arcs. Jeevan Kumar will get a number of hilarious scenes as a gangster. Rakendu Mouli (who has additionally written the dialogues) and Josh Ravi do their elements effectively.

The rushed romance between Krishna and journalist Satya (Gnaneswari Kandregula) is the one side that doesn’t sync effectively with the remainder of the story, however fortunately, it’s temporary.

Senapathi begins with the promise of an fringe of the seat crime drama however progressively turns into an emotional story. The emotional parts really feel prolonged and stretched; had it been shorter, it will have added to the sluggish burn environment of the crime drama.

When a senior cop, Param (successfully portrayed by Harsha Vardhan), is introduced in to hurry up the investigation, it offers the story some momentum. However finally, connecting the dots appears to occur at a leisurely tempo.

Regardless of all this, Senapathi is a reasonably engrossing story of crime, punishment and redemption.

(Senapathi streams on Aha)