Dasara Movie Review: Raw & Rustic, Nani Unleashed, Emotional Drama

It has been quite a while since Nani’s Adade Sundara. It has been quite a while since Dasara was announced.

Nani took it to his full with Dasara not only with acting but also with the promotions. Right from the release of the posters, to teaser, and working stills, it kindled curiosity among the audience as Nani was seen in a “not seen before” avatar.

When the trailer of Dasara was released it set expectations really high as it showed a bloody rampage with Nani going literally unleashed. Did the movie live up to its expectations? Read on!

Dharani (Nani), Suri (Deekshit Shetty) and Vennela (Keerthy Suresh) are childhood friends. The village they live in is Veerapally where coal mining is done in the premises. The “Silk” bar is the prime matter of the village.

The bar decides various crucial factors as all the men in the village are alcohol addicts, and women are affected by that and hence are against the bar.

The bar creates enough politics to affect the lives of the people in the village. In that, the lives of the three friends get affected too by both the political mess, and due to the filthy villain (Shine).

Dharani is shown vulnerable for the most part in the movie and Nani fits into such a role with much ease. Even in scenes where you would expect him to go muscular, he is vulnerable. He gets some guts while he is drunk. Except for one scene where he goes into “fierceful” mode in brief, in all the other scenes, he underplays. Even in the climax while he goes in with all rage, he fights as one among his other friends.

This adds strength to the characterization of Dharani and it is good that it is not compromised for heroism.

Deekshit steals the show as Suri. In all the scenes he appears, he scores. Keerthy as Venella is apt – a witty, bold girl with dreams. She emotes perfectly in the two phases of her life – when her life is all love and fun, and when her life turns to all tragedy.

All the others actors who play friends to Dharani have given neat performances. Though they look like side characters, their roles strongly get into our minds.

The villains though lacked proper characterization. Their characters are written weakly.

The movie is technically sound – the village with the coal dust set up and the makeovers of the actors takes us literally to Veerapally.

The story of the movie is not anything new and the screenplay makes the movie totally predictable. This is one of the biggest drawbacks of Dasara.

The next problem is trying to convey many things like friendship, love, alcoholism, politics, personal vengeance and so on.

The first half takes its sweet time to “establish” the characters and story stage. The interval block hypes up the expectations and is emotionally strong.

Post interval though, there is a heavy drag. It is surprising that the writing didn’t take advantage of the strong interval block.

The pre-climax scene is where the rampage occurs. Nani has given his all-in performance by emoting for a variety of situations like being vulnerable, being sad, being lost, being angry, being in rage and so on.

The movie is heavy on emotions (and the corresponding drag) and light on rage. However, the trailer showed just the opposite.

Nevertheless, a very good try by the debutant director Srikanth Odela, and the effort put in by the whole team is marvellous (art, set up, acting, background score, technical aspects and so on).

Definitely, a must-watch for Nani fans (you would love his swag all through) and for anyone who loves raw, rustic movies with authentic presentation. If you expect a 2-hour adrenaline rush though, you could be disappointed.