'Aithe 2.0' review : No thrills or frills here!

Aithe 2.0 taps into the heist thriller genre, unusual in Telugu cinema. This one brands itself as a sequel to director Chandrasekhar Yeleti’s debut film in 2003. Despite the familiar setting — six underdogs take on a cyber criminal in a virtual revenge act — the standalone sequel only ends up as a poor man’s Italian Job. Starring mostly newcomers barring Zara Shah (of Life is Beautiful) and Bengali actor Indraneil Sengupta, the film is amateurish from the word go. Poor detailing of the technical jargon and virtual dangers, weak performances, the inability to generate much tension don’t let Aithe 2.0 build any momentum whatsoever.

The film is narrated through the eyes of four unemployed youth who aim big despite their limitations. They day dream about overtaking global giants standing atop their balcony. A software solution idea surrounding Jan Dhan Yojana and automated SMS-banking facility strikes them, they claim it could change the face of the Indian banking system. They’re so confident about selling their revolutionary concept to a firm and signing a million dollar contract (which they almost end up doing), one wonders why were they were unemplyed all these days. There is only small talk about the technicalities, there’s no sense of struggle as they go through this phase. Even as success inches towards their door step, a business honcho and cyber criminal Avinash Ganguly (Indraneil) turns their world upside down, it’s precisely then that Aithe 2.0 actually takes off.

The ideas informing the film are unintentionally funny — a malware/ransomware can apparently burn a system or a Mac and hack into one’s data. A money transfer at a remote location translates to a bank in Kerala, a cyber cell commissioner roots for a group of hackers watching and cheering their online activity live as if he were watching a cricket match. Later he even offers them government jobs . Like these young men, director Raj Madiraju starts with an impressive idea but doesn’t know how to execute it. The director’s portrayal of the software industry is rather superficial.

Only Indraneil Senupta puts in an assured performance; the rawness of the debutants shows up often. The dialogues are poor in taste. The film stages a recovery in the final act, you enjoy the build-up though the staging is far from reality. Another interesting aspect of the film is its division into three stages — hope, hunger and resentment — akin to various steps of software development. One only wished these came together to tell a better story.