\'V\' review: No thrills in Tollywood\'s first OTT offering

V (Prime)
Cast: Nani, Sudheer Babu, Nivetha Thomas and Aditi Rao Hydari
Director: Indraganti Mohan Krishna

What could happen if a man who is on a killing spree challenges a tough cop to nab him? The much-awaited crime-thriller V dropped on Amazon Prime on Friday evening, the first-ever Telugu film to release on an OTT platform.

The plot revolves around DCP Aditya (Sudheer Babu), the most happening police officer in town, who’s on a hunt to nab the killer Vishnu (Nani). The killer drops clues for the police officer to decipher. So will the cop nab him?

Unfortunately, for all the hype and expectations the film created (and despite having Indraganti Mohan Krishna, a director known for his writing skills), V seems to have gotten a lot of things wrong.

The director may even have lost the plot when while making an action thriller for the first time, he chose to focus on elevating the principal characters’ design. With the writing and screenplay found wanting, V goes nowhere.

V is neither a comprehensive crime thriller nor a full-fledged action entertainer. It just hangs uncertainly in between. However, the film does have its share of interesting elements, including good performances, action sequences and technical finesse.

V even starts off on an exciting note — elevating DCP Aditya’s heroism, Vishnu’s approach, etc. But, as the film progresses, its narration falls flat. Just as the audience begins anticipating an interesting cat-and-mouse chase, the story fails to take off.

Indraganti’s attempt to branch out into a new genre is welcome, but he falls short of packaging a proper thriller, with twists, thrills and frills missing in the story. The killer’s flashback doesn’t create any sympathy for him. The romantic tracks for both Nani and Sudheer Babu weren’t exciting and the climax turns out to be just too ordinary.

That said, the writing leaves its mark in a few places with quirky and funny conversations, even as the narration gets predictable soon after.

Nani is the soul of the film, effortless in a grey character. As much as he brings laughter with his witticisms and one-liners, his army background scenes don’t seem convincing. Sudheer Babu does well as a flamboyant cop, and even matches Nani’s performance in many scenes. While Nivetha Thomas’s character, called Apoorva, lights up the screen, her role as a crime writer who researches psychopaths was left hardly explored.

Overall, V falls short of becoming the true-blue thriller