Veerappan Movie Review : RGV returns blazing guns but his terror tale is underwhelming

You can hate him,  you can like him but you can't ignore him.  And sometimes,  you can't help being in awe of him either.  Such is the hold of Ram Gopal Varma on his audience.  Even in the menacing Veerappan,  Varma goes back to his basics,  the mesmerizing shots that he used in Satya are still there in his films.  Now that is precisely the problem with him too.  In two decades,  the man hasn't considered routing away from his genre, revamping his movies or atleast bring some variety to his style. Instead, there is unbelievable loud music, garishly done frames and overbright colours that will hurt your eyes. RGV has a tough task at hand.  When one is making a movie based on the life of a dreaded dacoit who has made headlines constantly for two decades,  it is difficult to bring a fresh feel to the story. He in his trademark irreverent style,  takes the challenge head on packing the story with thrills and chills. There is enough material for consistent drama but the filmmaker wastes too much energy in making it a cat and mouse game. 

The first half of the film has you hooked.  Veerappan's painful backstory to his cold-blooded brutality sucks the audience into his sinister world of crime. The film starts off on a brooding note,  with the dacoit's aura looming large over those around him. The plot entices us with the show of how a dreaded man was brought down by a group of sharp cops.  An undercover spy, decides to take the help of Priya (played beautifully by Lisa Ray)  whose husband was murdered at the hands of the master criminal.  However,  the plan falls flat and from then on begins the revenge saga against the people who want him dead. Now as a standalone story,  this one is bound to catch your fancy.  Its basic plot line is a result of rigorous research and books like ‘Veerappan: India’s Most Wanted Man’ by Sunaad Raghuram which evidently played a crucial role in solidifying the narrative.

This is one of those films in which the bane of the second half falls heavy. As the leading man moves from post to post killing people heartlessly,  your heart will sink.  To be able to stomach what the first half has in store,  you must have a heart of steel.  There is little chance that you'll go by all that bloodshed and dramatic action without holding strong in your desire to sit through the film.  Thankfully,  till interval the movies doesn't disappoint. Actor Sandeep Bhardwaj is fabulous,  alternating between stealing the thunder from the scenes. It was amusing to see Veerappan and his benign wife flirt amidst the chaos and the killing that plagued the jungles of the region. 

As soon as the second half begins,  Ramu gets lackadaisical,  his plot gets loopy and there is absolutely no respite from the overdramatics that pan out on screen. The build up for the mission to kill Veerappan had better punch than the mission itself. Needless to say that it is done rather conveniently. Ramu's story had merit but he fails to add enough flair to it. It doesn't have the unforgettable quality of Satya or even Company.  In those films,  fictitious characters became real and in this one, even real ones ended up looking contrived.

We won't call the script incoherent.  In fact,  one of the film's biggest plusses is its writing.  Even when the actors stumble at their jobs,  the material comes to their rescue.  But Ramu's vision is compromised towards the end.  It is almost as if he didn't know how to execute his story.  His confidence helps the ship sail through,  but there is hardly anything noteworthy to say about it.  Barring the scene in which the dacoit kills an informer,  there is not another equally overwhelming scene to its credit. 

The biggest win, however, is that it brings alive on screen one of India's Most notorious men,  a man who kept the woods of three states under his thumb and terrorized local and national Governments for 20 years.  Sandeep has the canter and demeanor of the dacoit but his story lacks the larger than life gusto. 

We rate the film a 40% on the Pinkvilla movie meter.