Vijayanand Review: Partly rushed yet mostly absorbing!

Ashwin Ram

Vijayanand is a Kannada language biopic film about the life of Vijayanand Road Lines (VRL) owner Vijay Sankeshwar, who is a business phenomenon in Karnataka.

Premise

By the learnings from his inspiring father, Vijay Sankeshwar passionately runs a printing press which is their family business. For a better future, he steps out and starts a lorry transport business. His challenging path that led him to success is the remaining story.

Writing/ Direction

Some traces of the film seem to be on the lines of KGF, like how a few scenes are treated and some powerful narrative dialogues are portrayed. Yet the movie plays to its strengths, which is the originality in the story. The screenplay doesn’t lose focus from the core subject, especially the first half is very neatly made by slowly and steadily establishing the starting stage of the mighty entrepreneur. The flow is crystal clear till the interval point as the sequences are penned and executed in a believable manner, we get to invest our interest over the lead character and his life. Even the emotions are rightly conveyed, the father-son sentiment clicks and also get valuable payoffs in the later part. Coming to the second half, the director has tried to stuff so much content into it, so could not really involve and feel for the happenings. Most of the topics covered post the halfway mark seems like a touch and go, I wish the political and publication chapters could have had a deeper storytelling for a better impact. Special mention to the dialogue writer [lyricist Madhura Kavi] for the Tamil dubbed version, commendable work.

Performances

The casting choices are fascinating and merely perfect. Take the leads, the actors placed for the three generations of men in a family. Anant Nag, Nihal Rajput and Bharat Bopanna have fitted and played their parts superbly. They maintain a chemistry as well, Anant Nag is a solid performer, while the other two have nailed it with more swag than substance. The women in the film hardly have anything to contribute, poor roles. The supporting artists have done their job well, as characters they are a mixed bag as some of them are powerful and the rest are like passing clouds.

Technicalities

Songs are substandard, not bad though. But the background score is the spine of the film, enhances the situations and beautifully uplifts the motivating mood throughout the movie. Solid cinematography, despite so much going on, the visual engagement is spot-on and delivers the needful. Fine piece of editing too, mainly in the first half, though it is a narrative choice, felt some important segments of the second half could have had more stays.

Bottomline

Has an inspiring, promising and a powerful first half. An unhurried pace in the latter would have strongly registered things, nevertheless an engaging watch.

Rating - 3/ 5