Pogaru Movie Review

Pogaru Plot:

Shiva (Dhruva Sarja) loses his father at a young age and he develops hatred towards his stepfather, thinking the latter tricked his mother into getting married again. Shiva grows up to be a perfidious and immoral man who goes to any extent to pocket easy money. The rest of the story uncloaks Shiva's strained relationship with his parents and the anti-social activities he carries out in quest of money.

Pogaru Analysis:

Pogaru follows a formulaic template which we see in every other commercial film, but things go horribly wrong when it comes to screenplay and presentation. The film opens with sequences pertaining to the past trauma of a seemingly orphaned kid, Shiva, who is deprived of parental love and care. Bearing all the hardships he was put through in his mind, Shiva decides to dissociate himself from his stepfather and in a sense, the entire society. But he always has a special place for his mother in his heart and wishes to spend some quality time with her. Once fully grown up, Shiva, played by Dhruva Sarja, starts troubling those around him with his atrocious behaviour. He even forces the female lead played by Rashmika Mandanna to love him and on more occasions than one, manhandles her. The fundamental flaw in the film lies in the poor establishment of lead characters. Lengthy scenes are used to register the troubled past of Shiva but none of them have any novelty. His so-called aggresive behaviour and menacing antics make the audience cringe after a point.

Dhruva Sarja has built a muscular body and sports a rugged look with lengthy hair and thick beard for his role in the film. This is not the kind of physical appearance of the male lead that Telugu audience are accustomed to. Nevertheless, he emotes well and does a fine job in emotional scenes. Rashmika Mandanna's character is poorly written and it has very little importance in the story. Another noted Kannada actor Dhananjaya plays an important role and he is impressive. Telugu character artist Sampath plays antagonist and coincidentally, he is the one who kills the male lead's father. His character is very typical and has no freshness. Pavithra Lokesh is seen as the male lead's mother and she delivers a fine performance. The director Nanda Kishore tries to infuse as many hero elevation scenes as he can into the story but he leaves novelty and logics to the air. The screenplay is way too scrappy. The penultimate and climax are farcical and leave the audience searching for the exit door. Amid all this havoc and illogical proceedings, we are served some brother-sister sentiment which acts as a rotten cherry on the top of this poorly baked cake. That's not all, there is a subplot which deals with illegal land acquisition by the the antagonist and the supposed hero helping him in the process. Let's not go deep into this mess.

Pogaru Verdict:

In the ending portions, we see 4 professional WWE wrestlers tossing the protagonist into the air and thrashing him black and blue. This comes out of nowhere. Guess that sums up this annoyingly loud movie, as a whole.