George Reddy has become the talk of the Telugu Cinema industry with its eye catching promos. The film is a biopic (although the makers claim it to be a fiction) based on an influential student leader from Osmania University in the late Sixties. Did the film live up to its hype?

What is it about?

George Reddy (Sandeep Madhav) is a brilliant student who ‘raises his voice’ against the atrocities happening in the Osmania University Campus. He soon becomes a student leader and fight the inequalities and vandalism in the campus. He becomes the prime target for many of his opponents and they plot a plan to eliminate him.

Performances:

Sandeep Madhav’s performance is decent as George Reddy. His demeanor, walk and dialogue delivery are impressive. His styling also is on point, but the character has been poorly etched due to the lack of imagination and character study. Muskaan is okay as the female lead who secretly admires him. Abhay got a meaty role as George’s close aide and he delivered a noteworthy performance. The actor who played Lallan Singh is good. Manoj Nandan, Chaitanya Krishna and Satya Dev made their presence felt.

Technicalities:

Jeevan Reddy focused more on style than substance. The lack of material on hand is clearly evident as the director fails to give an insight into an iconic personality like George Reddy. Either enough research was not done or he had succumbed to external pressure that he didn’t try to establish who George Reddy was fighting against. The director has shown his skills in visualizing the action sequences though.

Background score is terrific and lifts the film in many sequences. The song on heroine could have been avoided though. Cinematography is fantastic in action scenes. Credit to the stunt directors who did a commendable job in bringing the fireball fight and blade fight so effectively onto the screen. Editing is uneven. Dialogues are good in parts. Production values are good.

Thumbs Up:

Fights

Background score

Interval Speech

Thumbs Down:

Lack of character study

No proper insight into the iconic student leader’s life and ideologies

Clumsy second half

Hurried and ineffective Climax

Analysis:

George Reddy is an iconic student leader who has left an indelible mark on Osmania University history and student politics of Andhra Pradesh. When a biopic is made on such an influential character one would expect the film to be very inspiring and leave a lasting impression on its audience. Unfortunately, George Reddy turned out be a lackluster exercise where the director hasn’t done proper research on the character and the incidents in Reddy’s life. Even the screenplay was penned very clumsily that it becomes confusing to follow the events that unfold on screen.

Director Jeevan employed Mahanati kind of screenplay technique to drive this biopic by starting it off with a documentary filmmaker going in search of knowing details about George Reddy. This seems to be a last minute addition to the screenplay that none of the ‘research’ scenes add any value to the script. There is an attempt to establish the mother-son bonding from the beginning, but despite having many scenes on them it doesn’t come off effectively on to the screen. The story opens with the introduction of George Reddy as a kid, but quickly cuts to the scene where he enters Osmania Campus.

The student politics and the societal indifferences that gave rise to the George Reddy phenomenon are not established well. There is a deliberate attempt to not to get into the reasons that irked George Reddy, which diluted the character’s very own ideologies and impact on the campus politics. Including heroine’s track only made it furthermore unserious and diverted the film from its core point. George Reddy comes across as a hot-blooded youth who uses muscle power to tackle anything. It almost appears as a thirty minute docu-drama stretched into a three hour film with the emphasis on action sequences and hero elevation scenes.

Second half becomes even clumsy as it reaches the climax. The incidents that resulted in the killing of George Reddy are not shown effectively. Student fights get repetitive and utterly boring after a time. Even the scene where George Reddy gets brutally killed has been done in a hurried fashion that it doesn’t make the desired impact. The film should have been a proper tribute to the iconic student leader, but it ends up as an attempt to cash in on his name and popularity.

Verdict: Sorry, George!