Nandamuri Balakrishna is always in the news for the wrong reasons. We approach his potboilers with a certain amount of bias. Not always unfounded.
Daaku Maharaaj, now streaming on Netflix, comes with its baggage of controversies. Urvashi Rautela, for one. There were reports of her role being edited out by Netflix. Not true. She is as good as edited out without extraneous intervention. Her entry sequence has the camera focused on her ample derriere. The plot never gives us a chance to see much more of her.
The focus of attention is…okay, I will give you a guess. Right! The hero is the eponymous Daaku Maharaj Nandamuri Balakrishnan himself. This time he plays an outlaw who needs to protect a little girl from a slew of slimy marauders, each more unwashed and stinky than the previous.
A thought: why are most outlaws in South Indian films shown to be dark-skinned and dirty?
DM (we shall call our hero by our own pet name) is well-played, in more ways than one. Though he is an outlaw himself his persona is diametrically contrary to the other outlaws of the screenplay (please note: Good Outlaw vs Bad Outlaw) who scream and play satans with a desi glee. DM loves women of all ages, Nature, kids….gosh, he loves to love! But when push comes to shove he is a holy terror.
The first half of this not entirely unwatchable potboiler is devoted to building a tender relationship between DM and little Vaishnavi played by Veda Agarwal, who is not a good actress, lekin chalo bachcha hai… But how do we explain the theatrical presence of some of the other performers, especially in the negative roles, like Ravi Kishan, who blessedly dies when the plot is still young. Kishan hams so much I feared for the pigs.
Nandamuri Balakrishna is surprisingly gentle. His face simply melts each time he looks at the little girl. Strangely the fleeting moments he has with Urvashi Rautela his face freezes.
The less said about the second half the better. The plot moves without warning into a waterless village run by Bobby Deol and the gang. The brutality, the killings, and the maelstrom of mayhem are oppressive. Deol, so effective as the badman in Animal, is here whittled down to a whimperish shadow. He comes in too late and brings almost nothing to the table.
Also Read: Daaku Maharaaj: 5 Controversies That Kept The Film In The Headlines!
There is a potentially interesting twist to Deol’s character when his wife (Shraddha Srinath, wasted) reveals herself as part of the little girl’s life. But such twists in the tale cannot add heft to the pale. What starts off as a reasonably involving father-child heartwarmer rapidly degenerates into utter bedlam.
Why so many venomous villains and sleazy sidekicks? Why must the average Telugu potboiler (that word again!) fly in so many directions? The desperate anxiety to be a crowd-pleaser reminds me of that over-the-hill bar dancer who hides her wrinkles under tons of rouge.
