‘The Ghost’ movie review: Nagarjuna’s action is slick, but misses out on Bullseye

Movies that are solid on paper and soft in execution manage to leave a lingering taste with all their ‘might’ at times to think about. One hour into Nagarjuna’s festival release ghost, I was gearing up for a film that would do the same in the end, but it fails even in that relief. Praveen Sattaru’s action-drama is a case of multiple misfires from point-blank range, and has little to hold back.

I say point-blank because it seems ghost tries to be two different movies at once; A badass-cop-at-a-revenge-spree action, as well as a family drama about protecting a child, but it only comes close to getting one of them right.

The film begins with Vikram (Nagarjuna) and Priya (Sonal Chauhan), Interpol officers who kill bad guys for dinner and love for sweets; Yep, every mission cuts to cheesy, romantic fun on a yacht. We soon learn that all is not well with Vikram and after following him for a very long time, the ghosts of his past are holding on to him. A case of collateral damage during a mission puts him on edge, and he vows to eliminate all organized underworld criminals. A two-hour extended cut of Vikram dealing with his past, and biting gangsters with him katana Talwar’s Walk could have been fun, but this movie is not.

The story jumps to five years after his fast when Vikram’s long-estranged sister Anu (Gul Panag) reunites to ask for his help. An unknown gang threatens to kill Anu and her daughter Aditi (Anikha Surendran), and a whole new world of corporate politics opens up. Most of these parts seem like repetitions of tried-and-tested topics and there starts a huge drop in engagement. Even as it draws you into an emotional flashback that led to Vikram and Anu being separated for 20 years, you end up wondering why they both look exactly alike – a gap of 20 years. Despite – and why did that gap have to be so long?!

From start to finish, the film consistently manages to raise our hopes of redemption, only to end it brilliantly. The first act has both skillfully choreographed action shots in a high-speed car chase and equal parts regular showy camera movement. When you see that Priya has saved her senior’s contact in her smartphone as the ‘Interpol Head’, the realism it shows and the seriousness she builds through the action sequences immediately becomes a joke. Is. Add dialogue performance, emotional setup to the payoff, and too many cliched twists to the mix, and the film becomes quite a tedious affair.

Refusal to settle down as an average film, ghost Steps up the notch once again in its third act with plenty of engaging action sequences, only to kill it with obvious flaws and remind us just how much potential it has unleashed. In retrospect, like an all-hell-let-lose action fest john wick There would have been a better film. In fact, there’s a direct tribute to the now-iconic character of Keanu Reeves through a scene inspired by the famous “Pencil” scene.

But more than John Wick, ghost Should have belonged to Nagarjuna Vikram HitlistKind (Superhit Kamal Haasan-starrer). I say this for many reasons. Nagarjuna enters Telugu industry Vikram In 1986, the same year that Kamal released his spy film Vikram in Tamil. After 36 years, once again we have Kamal Haasan starrer named Vikram (in which he is called ‘Bhoot’), and we get an action movie called ghost From Nagarjuna (in which he played the role of Vikram). There are many such happy on-screen coincidences between the two films, but only one of them seems to have caught the eye of the audience. Despite having an automatic — and a stylish, flamboyant action backdrop — in his arsenal, director Praveen brings a blunt sword to a gunfight, and the result is a huge mess.

Bhoot is currently playing in theaters