Action No 1

Here's another brain bender from our Tollywood filmmakers with all laws of physics conked out one after the other in pieces of reel. Action Number 1 is an out & out action film alright - the audiences are out for most of the part and those on the screen act for the enthusiastic spittoons and the over-fervent ceiling fans.

The murky plot toys around the police department - elementary m' boy, police & butt-kicking rock great together. Accordingly, we have Dharma and Vikram taking up their uniforms with the intentions of doing the same. They are identical twins, and that's what this entire bishum-swoooosh-wooof-brrrrrang banks on.

Now one of the two swipes a zillion Gandhis off the police treasury and kills on a spree. And so enters a special CBI officer Teja (Thriller Manju), to nose into the robbery and the killings. And like an honest handkerchief manufacturer, the genuine culprit lets Teja stick his nose into his business.

About half a second into the flick, you get the funda that 'action' here purely refers to the softening up of some majorly thug skin in the most subhuman way possible. Okay, we can take the lead person in an action movie not looking like Brad Pitt, but tolerating so many beings that make Vijaykanth look like the sexiest thing alive?

Anyway, no one knows which of the two did it, but soon one of twins (Vikram) tries to flex his facial muscles at a girl, and she returns with equal constipation, which brilliantly proves the other (Dharma) to be wicked. In the end, however, it is revealed that the evil twin turned evil in order to amass wealth for his love, Swapna.

Now that the story's out of the way, we can get to the most important parts of the flick - the intervals. The intervals between all the confusions of the story, which are filled up with fight sequences. Some stunts are perhaps a little amusing, but nothing we haven't seen before. The sound effects during these scenes are loud enough to cause echoes in our grand children. Thriller Manju worked hard to mimic orang-utans. And to make it fast paced, every "action" sequence of his has been fast-forwarded.

Ramlaxman, those twins, are impossible to tell apart. They're like the two loaves of bread with us sandwiched between them while the director hungrily hogs on. With Vani Vishwanath and a whole lot of other masala girls in it, it was a bitter disappointment too much to swallow for a huge lot among the audience as there were no saucy rain songs. Actually no songs at all. Sorry to inform you Mr. Sagar, but your experiment has bombed pathetically.