Cast: Naga Shaurya, Yukti Thareja, Satya,
Writer-Director: Pawan Basamsetti
Rangabali is problematic on so many levels. Initially, it feels like yet another harmless fun entertainer with an objective to cement its protagonist, Naga Shaurya, as a legit mass hero. The ambition is correct, but the formula it chooses to achieve it is incorrect. Filmmaker Pawan Basamsetti believes that making the audience wait for the hero’s ‘entry’ by just teasing his presence through back and leg shots for nearly 2 minutes before we actually see his face counts as ‘mass’. But the film doesn’t give a single reason for us to genuinely root for the protagonist, and all it does is reinforce the most generic tactics like slow-motion shots and loud music to sell this mass. Not only does it feel unwarranted, but incredibly imitative and unconvincing.
When Ram jumped into a sea of raging protestors to apprehend an individual in RRR (2022), the masterful filmmaking sold us this unbelievable scenario like it was nobody’s business, never making us question the practicability of the man’s action. In Rangabali, Shaurya does something similar early in the film: he takes on a huge crowd singlehandedly, but the way this scene is shot looks like a parody of RRR’s iconic scene. These two films might be poles apart, but I’m just saying that you need good filmmaking to convince you that your hero is larger than life and can pull off the most inane feats. That’s exactly what Rangabli lacks. It assumes that making the hero kick a couple of poor fighters into the air suffices to make the audience clap and hoot. Telugu filmmakers need to understand that ‘mass’ works in the most unconventional ways. Was Rangasthalam (2018) a conventional mass movie? But didn’t people love and cheer for the protagonists? Did they have specific ‘elevation scenes’ or heroic slow-mo shots? Emotion and relatability lend a massy quality to films, not the superficial packaging.
At the center of Rangabali are well-intended and heartening ideas. Shaurya, who is dubbed as Show, ascribed to his tendency to flaunt and grab eyeballs, believes in living like a king in his small hometown, Rajavaram. Through his proclivity, the film discusses the importance of identity. In fact, it’s interesting that the film’s central conceit, one involving the Rangabali circle, the center of Rajavaram, is directly linked to identity. The locality’s name originated from the murder of a hooligan named Ranga Reddy. The villain, played by Shine Tom Chacko, draws his power from the identity of the circle because it’s his father who murdered Ranga. When Shaurya is tasked to change the name of the circle to win the approval of his lover’s father, the fight between the hero and the villain becomes about identity. It’s a wonderful idea because both the hero and the villain are equally obsessed with fame. But no, it’s never fully explored.
Likewise, another lovely argument the film posits is our obsession with negativity. “We forget all the good deeds a man did for 30 years once an unproven accusation is laid against him and associate the man only with the one accusation,” says Vishwam (Goparaju Ramana) to his son Shaurya at their darkest hour. That’s precisely what the film tries to address, but the way it is addressed in a climactic speech is rudimentary, despite the good intentions. Early in the film, we are introduced to a character who always goes on his moped to witness the ruckus that’s happening in the town. It’s a great setup, but the payoff we get is laughable.
Also, there are some logical issues in the film that made me wonder if nobody questioned such glaring errors on a script level. For instance, Shaurya and his friends, in order to create a sensation in the hometown, orchestrate a bomb blast at the Rangabali circle, and the blast is even caught on camera. But there are zero repercussions! This is not even addressed later on. Likewise, at one point, it’s revealed that Shaurya is directly connected to the death of Ranga Reddy, and he witnessed it firsthand as a kid, but the man doesn’t even remember any of it until the incident is narrated to him by a character who wasn’t even present at the spot. For years, we have given many masala films a leeway on this front but the lack of logic in Rangabali is just so obvious and it expects a next level of suspension of disbelief from us. Everything about Rangabali seems artificial, like its mimicking of many of its predecessors. The popular 'Pancha' scene from Gabbar Singh is placed as it is. And it is obvious that even the titular locality is a film set that we have seen innumerable times in the past.
Satya as Agadham, a person who thrives in others’ misery, offers some relief, but even his thread is too overdone. The humour can be crass and problematic at times; an Islamaphobic gag is thrown in for laughs, and so we see Sapthagiri as a TV reporter beat women in what's supposed to be a funny scene. Rangabali, unfortunately, ends up as a guidebook for how not to make a mass movie, and what makes it more disappointing is that it has lots of potential to be a great entertainer.