Movie : Jagannatakam
Rating : 2.5/5
Cast: Pradeep Nandan, Abhinav, Khenisa Chandran Others
Directed by: Pradeep Nandan
Produced by: Aadi Sesha Reddy Indupuru
Banner: Chitrasoudham
Music by: Ajay Arasada
Release Date: 2015-03-13
Pradeep Nandan made debut as an actor and director with Jagannatakam which is a thriller drama.
Story :
Prudhvi (Pradeep) is an aspiring actor who falls in love with Bhanu (Khenisa). But they soon breakup as Prudhvi couldn’t succeed in reaching his goal. His father commits suicide and his sister goes missing.
Prudhvi bumps into Bhanu and her silent lover on a road trip and three of them goes to an abandoned hotel when their car meets with small accident. Something dangerous awaits them in that hotel and the rest of the movie is about the consequences of it.
Performances:
Pradeep Nandan tried to imitate Pawan Kalyan in casual scenes and he has gone overboard in dramatic scenes. He has peculiar body language and dialog delivery but should work on them if he wants to continue as an actor.
Khenisa doesn’t have the features of a female lead. She is too ordinary and everyone falling head over heels for her seems artificial. Abhinav tries hard to be funny but in vain. Shivaji Raja is wasted. There is nothing to talk about other actors.
Technicalities:
Pradeep Nandan’s direction is okay in bits and pieces but he failed as a director on a whole. He couldn’t get his screenplay right at the key junctures. He lost grip over the narration many a time that the viewers get disconnected with the proceedings. Director tried to make something different from usual, but that didn’t yield desired results because of poor script.
Only best part about this film is the background score composed by Ajay. He single handedly lifted the movie in many scenes. Cinematography is decent. Dialogues are too filmy at times. All the actors seem to be delivering the dialogues in similar fashion. Everyone in the film looks so emotional without any reason.
Thumbs Up:
Background Music
Thumbs Down:
Screenplay
Direction
Artistes Performance
Analysis:
Director Pradeep Nandan’s idea of mixing various genres into one film back fired big time. Movie starts off as a triangular love story and turns into a thriller and later shifts into a revenge saga. Director narrated this story in back and forth narration technique that only made it even more painful to watch.
Shifting from the present to flashback has been done neatly until a point, but after that it gets clumsy with flashback scenes turning out to be a bore fest. Director should have stuck with the thriller genre after the gang starts attacking the lead actors. Instead he kept on moving back and forth until the climax fight. The hotel episode is inspired by Hollywood thriller Vacancy.
One gets a feeling that the director should have copied that film completely rather serving this nonsense to the audience. Jagannatakam is one of those films that will start to test your patience within the first fifteen minutes and keep on attacking your senses till the very end. Watch it at your own risk.
Verdict: Terrible Natakam!
