Cast: Prabhas, Shraddha Kapoor, Jackie Shroff, Chunky Pandey, Vennela Kishore, Murali Sharma, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Arun Vijay, Mandira Bedi and others
Director: Sujeeth
The wait for hugely anticipated film, Saaho, starring Prabhas and Shraddha Kapoor has finally come to an end. Made on a budget of more than Rs 300 crore, the makers also roped in international technicians and a multi-industry cast to add to its appeal.
Story: Prudhvi Raj (Tinnu Anand) is an underworld don who wants his son (Chunky Pandey) to succeed him. Meanwhile, a parallel gang helmed by Roy (Jackie Shroff) runs a syndicate called Roy Group of Companies. The two gangs are at war and when Roy comes to Mumbai, he is killed by Prudhvi Raj’s gang. Roy’s son Vishwak (Arun Vijay) succeeds him.
Against this backdrop, a Rs 2,000 crore theft happens and the police appoint Ashok Chakravarthy (Prabhas) as special officer and Amrita Nair (Shraddha Kapoor) as his assistant. The two fall in love and the police make a shocking discovery about Ashok. Who steals the Rs 2,000 crore and who Ashok really is forms the crux of the story.
Director Sujeeth was clearly ill-equipped to handle the huge responsibility of directing Saaho. Unfortunately, the young man has only proven his critics — who thought he would turn the film into a mess — right.
Right from the beginning to the end, nothing holds the viewer's interest. Saaho is a completely mindless and unbearable film and one fails to understand how the makers poured so much money into it without any proper story. Even the action scenes are not impressive.
While Saaho was being touted as a screenplay-based film, there is in fact, no screenplay at all and everything is a disjointed mess. There are too many artistes in the film with a lot of incoherent action scenes, gunfire and racing. For the entire duration of the movie, one simply cannot understand what is happening onscreen. Given that Sujeeth has written the story and dialogues, the blame should go squarely to him for the mess!
There are no outstanding performances in Saaho. Prabhas’ looks and outfits are unimpressive and he seems a bit lazy and disinterested as he trudges through the film wearing only one expression. Also, Shraddha Kapoor is a total waste in this film while several other Hindi actors like Mahesh Manjrekar, Jackie Shroff, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Mandira Bedi and Tinnu Anand appear and disappear at will. The music and action scenes don’t do anything to redeem the film either.
Sadly, Saaho is an unbearable watch, and even Prabhas fans are sure to be sorely disappointed. Though released with plenty of hype and hope, it falls short of all expectations. This is easily one of the worst movies in recent times and sure to be an irredeemable loss to the makers, cast and crew of the film.
