Hari Hara Veera Mallu Part 1 Review - A Poorly Executed Period Actioner

Ashwin Ram

Hari Hara Veera Mallu is a period action drama starring Pawan Kalyan, Bobby Deol and Niddhi Agarwal in the lead roles. The film is produced by AM Rathnam, directed by Jyothi Krisna and Krish Jagarlamudi. The music is composed by MM Keeravani.

Premise:

Set in the 17th century, fierce outlaw Hari Hara Veera Mallu played by Pawan Kalyan is assigned to recover the precious Kohinoor diamond which is under the control of ruthless Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. His true intentions are revealed later which forms the crux of the story.

Writing/ Direction:

Despite the usual tropes, the structure of the script has enough worthy plot-points to be made as a watchable film. The execution misfires big time due to an uninteresting screenplay. Barring some passable scenes in the first hour, the flow is horrendous as it lacks clarity of what exactly the end goal of the story is. It starts as how an outlaw is going to win over the ferocious Mughal emperor, but by the time it focuses on this particular element is at the tail end where we are left cluelessly without any closure. The entire junk that lies in between is irrelevant to the core story, the adventures of the hero running behind the diamond. If the idea is to make an Avane Srimannarayana type of film, then the script has to be perfectly interconnected to tease us with the twisted storytelling format. Twists barely create any impact, the intended comedies fall flat and the big scale heroic situations turning into big jokes, the face-off scene between Pawan Kalyan and a bunch of wolves seemed to be a spoof material. The flashback had the potential for an emotional backing, but the filming style did not result in transforming the same.

Performances:

Pawan Kalyan’s screen presence is powerful as always, no big scope to perform, he does well in delivering the punch dialogues. Niddhi Agarwal’s character might have had the importance on paper, but her scenes end up being poorly portrayed on-screen, also her makeup was so offputting. Bobby Deol fits fine as Aurangzeb, his role is single dimensional and the weak situations make him a dummy villain. Plenty of popular artists like Sathyaraj, Nasser, Easwari Rao, etc are casted in namesake supporting roles and some meaningless cameos in songs such as Anasuya Bharadwaj, Vennela Kishore, Redin Kingsley… they all act as passing clouds without adding any use to the flow.

Technicalities:

Except for the one dance number in the first half, the other tracks make no impact and a lot of songs are dumped back to back post interval. Sincere work by MM Keeravani with respect to background score, his efforts to musically improvise the film is very much evident. Dull cinematography, even the simple buildup shots are not captured efficiently to match the excitement of the fans. Disastrous VFX, the atmosphere effects, animals-involving portions and even the basic green mat shots look so amateur. The film is filled with lags, the edit pattern in general is messy, no clue who pitched the idea of abruptly cutting at the climax point just to make it into a two part saga. Stunt choreography lacks the punch, as it is the drama is missing, on top of it the fight sequences are too plain to engage.

Bottomline

An one-liner which is apt to make a convincing commercial outing is brought down to the ground level with weak screenwriting and cheap looking visuals. The idea to prolong the conclusion further to a separate movie is shocking us on a bad note.

Rating - 2/ 5