If I had a dollar for every time I thought, during the movie, that the budget for a particular scene/song alone could help make a good story-oriented, low-budget sensible movie, I will have enough dollars to fund a good story-oriented, low-budget sensible movie!
Sriwass’ fantasy tale is a nightmare even for those who are brought up on DC and Marvel superhero movies, where the impossible is just the start of the day and where everyone is anticipating a crossover. Sakshyam is the crossover our cinema doesn’t deserve but needs. Wait, I’m a little confused. Doesn’t need, but deserves?
Ever seen a man riding an ox, driven by vengeance (grammatically speaking, even the ox was looking for vengeance and it isn’t false)? But that is how the protagonist, aided by nature, seals the fate of the antagonist in this supernatural-themed film whose predominant bottom-line was noise – in costumes, dialogues, story, action, and even in its silence (**thinks of the only three silent moments at the start of the movie**).
Sreenivas plays Vishwa, whose entire family was wiped out in a Red Wedding style (GoT alert!) massacre by a violent Muniswamy (Jagapathi Babu), who has a penchant for quoting lines from Vemana Satakam, and his three brothers (remember the typical 90s villains?).
Vishwa is saved by a calf and through a series of serendipitous events lands in Kashi, where he is found and adopted by a wealthy NRI. Fast forward some years, and Vishwa is all grown up and seen playing video games. He falls in love with Soundarya Lahiri (Pooja Hegde), who gives religious discourses in the US (that’s a first in all the varieties of ways in which heroines have been introduced).
It is destiny, or so the makers will have us believe, that brings Vishwa to India. Before long he realises he is living the very video game that his company was designing with the help of a culture-expert-turned-video-game-designer-narrater-storyteller-marketing-guru-and-clairvoyant-fortuneteller.
How does Vishwa, who knows nothing about his birth parents, complete the cycle of justice with the help of the five elements is the thrilling question this movie attempts to answer. You are well-advised to ignore the movie unless you are someone who enjoys a good headache (highlight powerful punch dialogue – Idi pratikaram kadu, praticharya – this is not a revenge, this is divine retribution, excuse the not-so-accurate-translation).
The movie uses CGI heavily, almost making you wonder if special effects could have made someone emote as well, because there was this tall, well-built actor who kept appearing for fight sequences and then disappearing. Every supernatural element has been used in this movie, except maybe Brahmanandam’s comedy.
Pooja Hegde does her best to feature in the movie, and does succeed in a couple of scenes too. Like when she flies from the US to India after hearing about a mishap that almost claims her dad’s life, and then lands at the hospital beautifully decked up with perfect hair and makeup.
The best actor in the movie is a seer in Kashi who performs wall-art and announces the protagonist’s purpose and disappears, after realising that this hero doesn’t react. To anything. No muscles move, literally. Imagine that phlegmatic visage kill four antagonists, save his parents, mouth some incomprehensible dialogues and romance Pooja Hegde – that’s optimism only a creative genius could have envisioned. And such creative genius alone could have conjured an ending where divine lightning hits a dam and breaks it, so water can gush into a tunnel and wash away Muniswamy’s body to a point where the hero is waiting. On an ox. With a trishul.
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the film’s producers or any other members of its cast and crew.
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