The sole interesting factor is the actor. Vijay Deverakonda’s look for his infiltrator’s character is fascinating in its possibilities. He looks lean mean forlorn and unforgiving. He is at once the perpetrator and the victim. A wanderer and a messiah.
This is all on paper. And I wonder how hard the actor worked on looking the part. That done, it must have felt like being all dressed with nowhere to go.
For looks alone, Deverakonda gets full marks in a film which is otherwise as hollow as a container of cola without any fizz. Kingdom is not only a waste of Deverakonda’s talent, but also a colossal waste of everyone’s time. Including the audiences.
What is the purpose of its existence, besides making its leading man look messianic in every frame? Deverakonda plays a wound-up tense police constable who at the end of this 2 hours 40 minutes of numbing nihility, is crowned the king of a tribe which looks like it could do with something more than waiting to be rescued.
Who are these people who have longed for a saviour for centuries waiting for the divine descendent to stop faffing and get to the point? Quite like the plot which can’t decide whether it wants to be Martin Scorsese’s The Departed or Raj-DK’s The Family Man Season 2. Or maybe just a bhai-bhai drama about two long-lost brothers who grow up in different countries.
A mysterious government man in a nylon suit , looking suspiciously like actor Manish Chaudhari, shows up at the hero Surya’s doorstep offering, in the pouring rain(why not meet inside, maybe the hero’s mother is watching Kyunki..Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, just like I should have) to send Surya to get his long-lost brother back.
The next thing we know, Surya is in a fancy prison doing a Shawshank Redemption with burly junior artistes throwing punches as if they are going out of style.
This, again, is visually impressive. But doesn’t really help us understand the plot. Why is Surya chosen to infiltrate a gang of smugglers in Sri Lanka when his emotional involvement in the mission is highly aggravated?
Why is Surya’s brother Shiva (Satyadev)’s role so hazily etched? Is he in the wrong profession, or just plain indecisive (like the screenwriters)? Shiva goes from one fatally improper decision to another until we reach a point when all his tribesmen are either massacred or emaculated.
While the villains massacre the entire trible, Devarakonda whines and moans in a lady doctor’s lap. She is Madhu (Bhagyashree Bose). No one has any idea what she is doing in this monochromed and multi-crammed mess. Maybe she walked into the wrong location and they decided to shoot with her a bit to make sure she doesn’t feel bad.
Apart from the hero, every character in the plot is a blur. None more so than the villain Murugan (Venkitesh V. P) who behaves like he is imbibing intoxicating herbs grown in his background. How can any actor give such a deplorable performance alongside a leading man who knows his job but doesn’t know where to apply his skills.
Writer-director Gowtam Tinnanuri shoots the film in a visually suitable coastal village. He then allows the plot to go at sea. Only cinematographers Girish Gangadharan and Jomon T. John seem to know what they are doing. All the rest seem to have been told they are part of a film that would create history. My sympathies for the believers.
