Rakht Charitra-I could have been great, acquired cult status even, but that was a possibility only in the realm of Satya where Ram Gopal Varma once dwelled. Since then, Varma has made, shall we say, “Chole”. Appropriately, therefore, his Rakht Charitra-I swings between mediocre and crappy, and suddenly, at times, gathers its mundu, takes a deep breath and jumps to awesome. Then back to mediocre-crappy, mediocre-crappy...
The mediocre involves standard scenes and overacting, while crappy moments are made up of trite dialogues delivered by caricatures.
And then there’s the awesome, and it begins with Abhimanyu and ends with Singh. Yes, Abhimanyu Shekhar Singh. There’s a scene in the film where Singh, who plays Bukka Reddy, is about to slash off the arm of his enemy’s mother (Zarina Wahab) when a lady cop points a gun at him and orders him to stop. Singh turns, bends, puts his nose at the gun’s nozzle, and while looking at her, caresses the gun with his face, smells it, licks it and leaves. Eleven-letter C-word. The scene is erotic, almost pornographic, but that’s not the point. The point is Abhimanyu Singh. A crazed beast, he makes this scene brazenly sexual and about a power game that is already loaded, without saying a word. I still have goose bumps.
Rakht Charitra-I is part one of a two-part biopic about two feuding families of Andhra Pradesh’s Rayalaseema region — specifically, Ananthapur district. Vivek Oberoi plays Pratap Ravi, who is fashioned after Paritala Ravindra nee Ravi, a former Naxalite who joined N.T. Rama Rao’s Telugu Desam Party and rose to become a minister. Ravi’s rival was Suryanarayana Reddy, nee Suri.
Theirs was a second-generation fight. Ravi is alleged to have killed Suri’s family by planting a bomb in their television set in 1993, and Suri allegedly masterminded the bomb attack which killed Ravi in 2005. Abhimanyu Singh plays Obul Reddy, a relative of Suri.
We begin in Anandpur where a terrible disembodied voice, the sort engaged to tell small children real-life stories, introduces us to Narasimha Deva Reddy, a powerful politician, and his trusted man, Veer Bhadra, a dalit wrapped in a red stole. One Nagmani Reddy is jealous of Veer Bhadra’s growing clout, so he poisons Narasimha’s mind and gets Veer Bhadra killed. Veer Bhadra has two sons, Shankar (Sushant Singh) and Pratap (Vivek Oberoi). Nagmani also has two sons — Puru and Bukka Reddy.
Shankar creates a sort of a dalit army and seeks revenge. Nagmani has him killed. Pratap, who was till now in the city, joins the fight, kills Nagmani and marries his college sweetheart Nandini (Radhika Apte).
Bukka, who we have already met, has been spreading his atank all over the district. That he is a sadist is established both by Bukka’s actions and Abhimanyu’s eyes and body.
Meanwhile, a new leader rises in the state — matinee idol Shivaji (Shatrughan Sinha). His election rally in Anandpur is disrupted by Bukka and to teach him a lesson Shivaji summons Pratap and offers him political protection, power and credibility. Pratap stands for elections against Puru, wins, and Bukka goes to jail. While Pratap, now a smoker in white linen and Ray Bans, is consolidating his power, one man, Sirji (who we don’t meet), gets Bukka out on bail. But Pratap’s star is on the ascend.
Part 1 ends here. Part 2, on November 19, will take forward the story, which will have Suriya playing Suri.
Rakht Charitra-I, shot simultaneously in Hindi, Telugu and Tamil, is violent and gory. There’s lots of slashing, chopping and bone-breaking. I counted 44 bodies — some bloody, others beheaded — and then got bored.
Ram Gopal Varma has stayed as true to the real story as possible, but he has not done justice to it. His attention to characters is random and detailing mostly whimsical. He doesn’t invest much time in exploring them, except Bukka. We listen to his main character, Pratap, talk about this and that and then watch him kill, but we don’t really get to know him.
Several scenes are spoilt by loud, ominous chanting and repetitive bloody montages. The worst culprit, of course, is the idiotic voiceover.
At the end, we get Varma’s fetishes, some idiotic scenes made worse by his creeping camera, a Sarkaar-like dinner-table scene, and clarity that the real story is way more interesting than Varma’s telling.
Though there are AP number plates and gold chains, the film has little south flavour. The film’s dialogues, crammed with hackneyed phrases and deathly clichés, flit between dehati and daccani.
Vivek Oberoi is good in action sequences, but when he has to act, emote, he is bad. Abhimanyu, whose clothes match his demented character, engages every pore and muscle of his body and dedicates it to Bukka. Shatrughan Sinha mocks himself and is made worse by ridiculous dialogues, most of which end with “thopic is over”.