Saaho Movie Review: Both Bizarrely Complicated And Incredibly Silly

Saaho Movie Review: Both Bizarrely Complicated And Incredibly Silly

In this article we present Saaho Movie Review, Saaho Movie trailer, Saaho Movie release date, Saaho Movie cast, Saaho Movie director, Saaho trailer release date, Saaho Movie ticket booking, Saaho Movie story for you.

Roy (Jackie Shroff) runs an underworld empire from Waaji city outside of India. He has India’s minister, Ramaswamy (Tanikella Bharani), kidnapped in India to get his signature on papers which will allow him to start a hydro electric power plant in India. Soon, Roy is killed by Devraj (Chunkey Panday), son of Prithviraj (Tinnu Anand), although his death is made to look like a fatal road accident in Bombay. Devraj has had an axe to grind with Roy because his dad, Prithviraj, had let Roy take over the underworld empire from him (Prithviraj) instead of bequeathing it to Devraj.

Devraj is sure, he will now be the uncrowned don but soon, Vishwank (Arun Vijay) appears before the board of directors of the Roy group of companies and stakes claim on the chair left vacant by his father.

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In a parallel track, the police in Bombay is intrigued by two major robberies – and then a third one. To solve the difficult robbery cases, police officer Shinde (Prakash Belawadi) is asked by his seniors to bring in undercover cop Ashok Chakravarthy (Prabhas) to lead the investigation team. It soon emerges that Shadow (Neil Nitin Mukesh) may be the thief. Amrita Nair (Shraddha Kapoor) works in the police force and is now working with Ashok Chakravarthy. The two also fall in love.

Vishwank and Ibrahim (Lal) who was Roy’s trusted lieutenant, tell their team member, Kalki (Mandira Bedi), about a black box kept in a safe place. The black box is key to reach Roy’s hidden wealth. Kalki comes to Bombay from Waaji city, takes the black box and keeps it in a safe deposit locker of Royal Bank as she is being attacked by unknown people in Bombay. Soon, police officer David (Murali Sharma) steals the black box from the locker. But is David acting on behalf of Ashok Chakravarthy or Shadow? What then happens to the black box? What is the wealth that the black box takes one to?

It is also revealed that before murdering Roy, Devraj had removed all the gold from Roy’s ship and then set it on fire. Does Roy’s son get the gold? If so, how? Does Roy’s son avenge his father’s murder? If so, how? Does Devraj get the throne or does it continue to be occupied by Roy’s son?

Sujeeth’s story is terribly complicated and moves on too many tracks. There are many twists and turns – in fact, so many that the audience loses track of them and keeps getting more and more confused. Sujeeth’s screenplay, written jointly with associates Anil Kumar Upadyaula and Ashwin Madasu, is terrible. It is an exercise in confusing the audience. Without revealing much, it can be said that the screenplay is replete with instances of impersonation, instances of betrayal, instances of greed for money and power – and the worst part is that seniors and their juniors in the police force indulge in the same type of crimes just as seniors and their juniors in Roy’s board indulge. Clearly, the intention of the writers was to impress the audience with the many twists, whether they make sense or not. The screenplay is replete with larger-than-life sequences which often fail to impress because the basic plot is too clichéd. Also, the many tracks in the screenplay serve more to irritate the audience than engage them. A lot of things are unexplained by the writers, leaving them for the viewers to interpret. Some of the action sequences, integral to the screenplay, are so outlandish that they become unintentionally hilarious. Even over-the-top action scenes would have been fine had the script been fresh, novel and plausible. But the script in this case is neither. The screenplay is so mindlessly written that the viewers get the feeling that they are being taken for granted. For instance, in one scene, much after countless bullets have been fired on Kalki’s car, the conversation in Amrita’s car, standing nearby, is to the effect that something terrible seems to be happening. Seems? It is already happening – and the audience can see it. So what is so ‘seems’ about it?

Viewed differently, the romantic track in the film looks forced; there is no comedy or humour; and emotions are conspicuous by their absence.

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Abbas Dalal and Hussain Dalal’s dialogues are rather bad and don’t create any impact.

Prabhas looks handsome and fills the screen with his presence, such is his physique. But probably because he doesn’t know Hindi, his acting seems to be without feeling. His dialogue delivery is below the mark. He is awkward in dances. He shines in action scenes. His costumes could’ve been far better. Shraddha Kapoor plays Amrita Nair without much fire. She gets limited scope and her acting is also so-so. Jackie Shroff is alright in a brief role as Roy. Neil Nitin Mukesh is routine as Shadow. In the first half, he can’t stand up to Prabhas. In the second half too, the impact of his performance is missing. Chunkey Panday is sincere as Devraj. Arun Vijay is okay in the role of Vishwank. Mahesh Manjrekar lends routine support as Prince. Prakash Belawadi is alright as Shinde. Murali Sharma is okay as David. Tinnu Anand makes his presence just about felt in the role of Prithviraj. Mandira Bedi is quite nice as Kalki but does not stand out. Lal is okay as Ibrahim, a close associate of Roy. Vennela Kishore provides average support in the role of Goswamy. Tanikella Bharani (as minister Ramaswamy), Supreeth Reddy (as Alex), Evelyn Sharma (as Aisha), Devan (as IG of police), Sharath Lohitashwa (as Mani), Ravi Sharma (as Ajay), and Duvvasi Mohan (as Ajay’s assistant) are alright. Jacqueline Fernandez lends star value in a song-dance number. Others are ordinary.

Sujeeth’s direction, like the script, leaves a lot to be desired. He knows the technical craft of direction but not the art of telling a story effectively. Sujeeth has not been able to adopt a narrative style which can engage the viewers. Besides, the drama is so long that it seems to be going on endlessly, boring the audiences to the hilt. Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, Guru Randhawa, Badshah and Tanishk Bagchi’s music is good but the absence of hit songs in a film of this canvas is sorely felt. Lyrics (Manoj Yadav, Guru Randhawa, Tanishk Bagchi and Badshah) are commonplace. Raju Sundaram and Vaibhavi Merchant do a fine job of the choreography. Ghibran’s background music is good but should’ve been far more impactful. Madhie’s camerawork is extraordinary. Action and stunt scenes (by Kenny Bates, Peng Zhang, Bob Brown, Stefan Richter, Dilip Shubbarayan, Ram Lakshman, Stunt Silva, Parvez Shaikh and Stunt Jashwa) are thrilling and will be loved by the masses and front-benchers. But some of the stunts (Parachute, Prabhas in yellow suit) are so unrealistic that they will irritate the audience, mainly because of the poor script. Sabu Cyril’s production designing and A. Vadivelan’s art direction are of a fantastic standard. A. Sreekar Prasad’s editing is nice. But the film still gets boring in many parts. Production values are superb.

On the whole, Saaho is a soulless film which bores more than it entertains. It has superb action but also a boring and confusing script. It will, therefore, not find appreciation commensurate with its investment and canvas. It will go down in history as a film which had a huge budget but, perhaps, none for the script. After a fantastic opening day and, therefore, a fairly good first weekend, its collections will come crashing down so badly from Tuesday (after Ganesh Chaturthi holiday on Monday) that it will soon be forgotten as a dismal fare.

Released on 30-8-’19 at Regal (daily 4 shows) and other cinemas of Bombay thru AA Films. Publicity: excellent. Opening: bumper. …….Also released all over. Opening was extraordinary at most of the places.

Cast: Prabhas, Shraddha Kapoor, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Jackie Shroff, Chunky Pandey, Mahesh Manjrekar, Mandira Bedi, Arjun VijayDirector: SujeethSaaho, which stars Prabhas in his first screen outing since the Baahubali films, took almost two years to complete, cost roughly Rs 350 crores to make, clocks in at nearly three hours, and leaves you with the kind of pounding headache that’ll take the better part of the day to recover from. At one point in the film Chunky Pandey, who plays a nostril-flaring crime boss named Devraj, threatens someone, saying, “I will put you through a lot of pain.” He might as well be speaking to the audience.Written and directed by Sujeeth, Saaho is the sort of film that pretends to be smarter than it actually is. It has a convoluted plot that’s crammed with twists and turns, and secret identities and big reveals. Yet, when stripped to the bone, it’s ridiculously silly. Jackie Shroff plays Roy, the head of a crime syndicate in a fictional land named Waaji, who is killed the very night he lands in India. Let’s just say the issue of his successor is a complex one. Closer home, meanwhile, the Mumbai police force’s star attraction Ashok (Prabhas) has been tasked with ferreting out a mysterious figure known only as Shadow (and played by Neil Nitin Mukesh), who’s believed to be the brain behind an ingenious theft of Rs 2,000 crores.There’s a lot going on in the film, but not a lot of it is especially compelling. Any expectation of logic and any semblance of reality quickly goes out of the window after Prabhas’ character is introduced running up every floor of a chawl, vanquishing criminal elements and miscreants including – wait for it – a python, and in another flat, a deadly black panther.I think it’s fair to say that the mantra of this movie is ‘anything goes’. The action jumps from one part of the globe to another without explanation, Ashok never misses an opportunity to shake a leg with fellow crime-fighter Amritha Nair (Shraddha Kapoor), and the crime syndicate appears to have a roster of heavily tattooed, imaginatively hairstyled henchmen who show up anywhere and everywhere to make trouble. The McGuffin in this story is something called a Black Box that Shadow has his sights on, and as you may have guessed, it is of course linked to the Roy empire.Now I don’t want to be the party pooper who’s looking for logic in a dumb action tentpole. To be fair we don’t ask these questions of a Fast and Furious film or a Mission Impossible movie, or even from the Race franchise in Bollywood. But the truth is that Saaho isn’t content with being a dumb action tentpole with slick set pieces – it insists on sweeping you into its plot, which is more than you can offer given how singularly harebrained it is.Literally the film’s only saving grace is its leading man who sportingly goes along with what’s expected of him. He is both tough guy and gentle giant; he is both romantic hero and rock-hard-abs-sporting-action-star. It’s a shame the film does little justice to his enormous presence and his unmistakable sincerity. In one bizarre yet oddly fascinating sequence he leaps, shirtless, into the open sky, as it turns out to rescue his damsel. Any actor who agreed to do that scene without questioning its relevance or logic deserves your sympathy.Others like Shraddha Kapoor, Chunky Pandey, Mahesh Manjrekar, Mandira Bedi, Tinnu Anand, and Neil Nitin Mukesh barely register despite reasonable screen time. You can hardly be blamed. The impressively staged but ultimately exhausting action sequences take up the bulk of screen time, but they can’t salvage this soulless film that has all the depth and emotional wallop of a video game.I’m going with one-and-a-half out of five.

Director: Sujeeth

Cast: Prabhas, Shraddha Kapoor, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Chunky Pandey, Arun Vijay, Mandira Bedi

The kindest thing you can say about Saaho is that it’s a full-blown theatre of the absurd. During promotional interviews, Prabhas kept describing it as a screenplay film, which I think meant that there are lots of twists and turns. Yes, there is that. This is a labyrinthine story with double identities, double crosses, a secret black box, two lakh crore rupees that are missing, cops and criminals who aren’t what they seem and a fictional city called Waaji, which is described as Hindustan ke door aur crime ke paas. The film begins with a voice-over that establishes what is going on and who is who. But the plot is both bizarrely complicated and incredibly silly. At least twice in the film, characters ask – what’s going on?  Honestly, I couldn’t tell you.

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Saaho is essentially a string of expensive set-pieces strung together to showcase the leading man. Prabhas returns to screen two years after the blockbuster Baahubali franchise. Amarendra and Mahendra Baahubali are a tough act to follow. So writer-director Sujeeth decided to throw everything into the mix – we get Prabhas as the charming, protective lover but also as the dangerous bad boy. Just in case you don’t get it, there’s even a song called ‘Bad Boy’ in which Prabhas stands on a tank while dozens of scantily clad women and Jacqueline Fernandez shimmy around him. At the end of the song, the tank crushes two cars while Prabhas walks by, smoking a cigar, in slow motion. It’s macho posturing taken to the next level. There’s also Prabhas as an avenging angel, as a good son, and as a do-gooder. It’s 50 shades of Prabhas – something for every fan.

The actor combines a gentle manner with an outsized physicality. He has great screen presence but even those mighty shoulders need a sliver of a story to lean on. In Saaho, more care and money seems to have been invested in the action, the songs and the wardrobe than the writing. It feels like a film from the 80s – Sujeeth gives us a world in which criminals in shiny jackets have board meetings to decide their next move, Mandira Bedi plays a key legal advisor – we’re told that she’s a Stanford and Oxford graduate so she wears handloom saris and silver jewelry. Neil Nitin Mukesh is a character who is so determined that he’s walking on a treadmill with a bullet in his leg. Meanwhile, the villains take pedicures and bubble baths, while loud background music underscores their evil. Chunky Pandey decided that he would add to menace by speaking very slowly – like Truck…milne….se…kuch…nahin…hota.

Both the cops and the criminals in the film are equally dimwitted. Especially Amrita, played by Shraddha Kapoor. In one scene, they lose the criminal they are chasing because she gets drunk and starts singing ‘Psycho Saiyaan’ instead of focusing on the job. And Amrita has clearly never heard of sexual harassment at the workplace. Because when she is asked by her senior, “Tum jaisi khubsoorat ladki police department main kya kar rahi hai?” she has no problem with it.

I know that a popcorn entertainer like Saaho isn’t driven by logic or coherence. And I would have made my peace with it if the film delivered a good time. My biggest complaint is that it’s a crashing bore. A lot of hard work has gone into creating the action and the extravagant sets. The budget is a reported 350 crores but for the viewer there’s little bang for the buck. I got through it by getting involved with the peripherals – like the many, muscled henchmen who had fascinating haircuts and tattoos. They all growled and glared into the camera. And it was a noticeably international team. In one scene, we meet baddies called the Franco Brothers. Their introduction is – inko darr hi nahin lagta.  Animals also appear randomly – an ostrich, a python and a panther. It’s superbly nutty.

There so much on screen and so little that sticks. I hope the next time Prabhas decides to dedicate years of his life to a project, it’s closer to Baahubali than this.

The much awaited, multilingual, heavy budget Saaho is here and hours after watching one of the very first screenings of the action thriller in Dubai on Thursday night, we are still reeling. Not so much from the awe inducing action sequences, the uber cool car chases or the sheer swagger of lead star Prabhas. Let's break down the Prabhas-Shraddha magnum opus for you because a regular review just won't do justice to this extravaganza, believe us. After all if the makers spent Rs350 crores on it, we owe it a more detailed analysis.

The plot: The story is too convoluted for us to even attempt to decipher it. Without giving too many plot points away, suffice to say when an undercover cop and an undercover criminal crosses path mayhem ensues. Cars get crushed, people get shot, glasses get broken and our hero takes flight. Prabhas plays Sidhant Nandan Saaho, an 'undercover cop/criminal' with a murkey past who falls for his colleague Amritha Nair from the Mumbai Crime Branch. Their case takes them to a den of villains each out to outdo the other in the fictional city of Waaji (a glitzy, futuristic looking Abu Dhabi) Just for starters there is Jackie Shroff, Mahesh Manjrekar, Tinnu Anand, Malayalam actor/filmmaker Lal, Arun Vijay and Chunky Pandey in a menacing role, though credit goes to the Telugu dubbing artist as well for making him sound so ominous. Be it Neil Nitin Mukesh, Murli Sharma or Prakash Belawadi, each side character is given enough screen time to shine. Mandira Bedi as the steely Kalki, clad in impeccable Khadi silk saris, is a delight to watch. Ditto with Shraddha who could have easily been relegated to mere eye candy, but is provided ample screen time to show off her doe-eyed, blowdried charm.

The action: Is that a bird? Is that a plane? No, it's Saaho literally flying off a cliff after first throwing off his parachute and then catching up with it midway, putting it on, activating it and WAIT FOR THIS, shrugging it off at the last minute so he can land on his own two feet to cheers from his swooning fans. Almost makes you wonder if the scripts of Baahubali and Saaho got mixed up at some stage. Ditto with the scene where Saaho dons a flying suit to rescue Amritha who is hanging out of a helicopter, only to ditch his armour and land safely on the ground with not a scratch on either of them.

The songs: You have to hand it to director Sujeeth for scouting for the best locations to shoot the song sequences. Shraddha is a dream to watch and Prabhas is extremely nimble footed - he literally saunters into our hearts with his sleek moves. Jacqueline Fernandez sizzles in the Bad Boy number.

The costumes: Saaho is undoubtedly one of the most stylish movies to come out in recent times. While the villains are all type cast with gold chains and smart suits, Prabhas literally sashays down the screen in his ankle grazers and at one point carries off a fire engine red suit with such elan you nearly swoon.

Verdict: Prabhas no doubt has the charisma and the swagger to make Saaho likeable. He plays it with enough gravitas to make us want to believe in him, but the script and action sequences are tailored to elicit jeers (or looks of horror/disbelief). At this point we need to acknowledge that certain sections of the audience were having a ball, cheering on their superstar and whistling and applauding his every move. Such fandom indeed is the only redeeming factor that can salvage this movie. Prabhas owes his fans big time if Saaho ends up creating any sort of record at the box office.

There is a scene towards the end of the movie when Saaho and Amritha are cowering under intense gunfire and the latter turns to the former to ask, 'Who are they? He replies nonchalantly: "Fans." Upon hearing more gunshots, she turns back to him and asks: "Why are they so violent then?". His reply? "Die hard fans." If you count yourself among that lot, then Saaho is definitely a must watch for you. Otherwise steer clear of this mess.

Disclaimer: Due to technical reasons, the Hindi screening we went in for, turned out to be the Telugu version. While we were busy speed reading the subtitles and watching the action scenes unfold open-mouthed (due to the sheer absurdness of the scenes, may we add), there might have been nuances in the script that we missed. Though we strongly believe even if a quarter of the money, time and energy that went into coordinating Shraddha's lipstick to her costume had gone on to the script we would have been lucky.

Movie: Saaho

Director: Sujeeth

Cast: Prabhas, Shraddha Kapoor, Jackie Shroff, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Chunky Pandey, Mahesh Manjrekar, Arun Vijay, Murli Sharma

Rating: 2 out of 5