Strangely some movies seem to be made for totally different reasons than to tell a story. Say, an awful actor wants to participate in an acting workshop conducted by a big shot director and improve his acting abilities. Or say, the director has some free time, or may be a senior actor who has never come on the screen without his wig wants to try out how it feels without a wig. Thanda Thanda cool cool?
Rowdy directed by the maverick RGV is probably one such example. Not sure if it’s called obsession with the Godfather or being shiftless, but RGV unsurprisingly packs Sarkar again and offers it as a Rowdy.
Anna garu (Mohan Babu) is a people’s man and runs his own parallel government. He is a man of principles and is respected by the junta. Every settlement he does is justified but the methods are violent. A group of bigwigs are keen to execute a multi-crore project which will make some people of the area homeless. Anna garu is a roadblock for them. The rest of the movie is about how the antagonists try to assassin Anna and how Anna and his younger son Krishna (Vishnu) retaliate.
Those who watched Sarkar feel continuous déjà vu moments from the beginning to the end. Except the setting every things look like an irritating imitation of RGV’s own work. Even as a standalone, the movie fails to grip. The film doesn’t maintain a seriousness that it deserves. The introduction scene of Anna garu doing a settlement and his mannerisms is promising. And that’s one of the very few scenes that work in the movie. Later the film becomes very bland.
To make it worse, unnecessary high pitched background score is played at inappropriate places making the effect at the appropriate places void. The love-track is way undercooked, and it’s only a burden.
The culmination lacks any power. There are two typical RGV style characters in the movie- one of them has nothing to do but keep eating pastries and a character keeps drinking water in a Kinley bottle throughout.
Mohan Babu’s look and adopting a different style of performance is the only positive point of the film. Jayasudha is very effective. This is Vishnu’s most bearable performance till date. Kishore gets an important role but the effect is very minimal.
This shoddy Rowdy is an old wine in a new cheap liquor bottle.
