Guru Review - A Boxing Tale Revisited Faithfully

Sethumadhavan

It’s often said that it is not easy for a director and an actor to feature in a remake of their own film. One might feel it should be a piece of cake, but the truth remains that not only do the director and actor have to live up to the reputation of the original film if it was successful, it is also never easy to repeat a similar act with the same amount of sincerity and dedication. I say this thanks to the release of Sudha Kongara Prasad’s Guru, the Telugu remake of her own Irudhi Suttru/Saala Khadoos. With this film being the 3rd on the same subject by Sudha, it only made the task that much more challenging not just for Sudha but also for Ritika Singh who plays the lead in all the 3 films, as well as some of the other actors who are also common to all the 3 versions.

Adi (Venkatesh) is a boxing coach whose own boxing career was cut short thanks to politics in the sport. His rival is Dev Khatri (Zakir Hussain), the association head and chief coach who now transfers Adi to Vizag on the pretext of a complaint of sexual harassment. In Vizag he is dismayed with the work being done by the junior coach “Punch” Ponds (Nassar) and his students. While Punch refers to Lakshmi aka Lux (Mumtaz Sorcar) as his best student, Adi realizes instead that it’s her younger sister Rameshwari aka Ramudu (Ritika Singh), a vegetable vendor who’s the one with the real potential. Despite the initial resistance from Ramudu Adi decides to train her, offering to pay her as well to make it lucrative. What happens from thereon in the lives of all these characters and does Adi go on to make a champion boxer out of Ramudu is what the rest of the film is all about.

There aren’t too many changes in this version, and in a way that’s a good approach by Sudha. So instead of Chennai in the previous 2 versions you have Vizag here. If the female lead was a fish seller in the previous versions, here she is a vegetable vendor. Other changes are way too miniscule to even really get noticed, not that you really feel about the same. While the soul of the original film has been retained, Sudha has made sure that the adaptation works genuinely well in Telugu as well. Harsha Vardhan’s dialogues seem to be on similar lines as that of the Tamil version, but that’s expected considering that a lot of scenes are similar as well. K.A. Sakthivel’s cinematography is effective, especially during the boxing portions. At a run time under 2 hours, the editing by Sathish Suriya is quite deft. Santhosh Narayanan has mostly reproduced the original songs here, with one additional song “Jingidi” being sung by Venkatesh himself.

Nassar as the junior coach, Zakir Hussain as the antagonist Dev and Guru’s rival and Mumtaz Sorcar as Lakshmi/Lux have all gone on to repeat their roles from the previous two outings and do justice once again. Venkatesh is quite a good choice to play the character of Adi, fitting into the able shoes of R.Madhavan quite well. It’s nice to see a big star like him sink into the character and allow the spotlight to remain on Ritika Singh majorly who indeed is a delight to watch on screen all over again. She doesn’t have to really alter any characteristic while portraying Ramudu, she’s done it well before and easily does a fabulous job once again. She completely owns the character, making the portrayal look even more effective. Guru is easily one of the better Telugu films in recent times, no doubt about it.

Bottomine:

Guru sees Sudha Kongara Prasad come up with a really good adaptation of Irudhi Suttru/Saala Khadoos. Venkatesh shines in a role that he can surely feel proud of and Ritika Singh does well once again.

Rating: 3/5