Naa Peru Surya Naa Illu India movie review: Vakkantham Vamsi has made an impressive directorial debut with the Allu Arjun starrer.
Naa Peru Surya Naa Illu India movie: Allu Arjun, Anu Emmanuel Arjun Sarja and Boman Irani
Naa Peru Surya Naa Illu India movie director: Vakkantham Vamsi
Naa Peru Surya, Naa Illu India movie ratings: 3.5 stars
Naa Peru Surya, Naa Illu India is the directorial debut of screenwriter Vakkantham Vamsi. He has taken a sensitive issue pertaining to national security and spun it into a 168-minute film with all the commercial elements intact to ensure Telugu star Allu Arjun’s core fans base is satisfied.
Solider Surya (Allu Arjun) is a troublemaker. He keeps smashing things as he is angry always. The only thing that separates him from the Hulk is he doesn’t turn into a big green monster when his heart begins to beat fast. He has been riding the bench at a military academy for about seven years now, waiting for a posting on the frontline. But, his commanding officer (Boman Irani) is not yet ready to send him to the borders as he is afraid that Surya may provoke World War 3. Such is the bad temperament of Surya.
Surya’s ever towering rage has cost him everything: his family, his girlfriend and has put his career in the army at serious risk. Before he could fight the enemies across the border, he should conquer a battle within. He should learn ways to keep his rage in check so that he can have a normal life like others.
Now, here comes the actual discord between Surya’s character and rest of the world. What is normal? For Surya living his life without fear, fighting crime and speaking truth to power is normal. He lacks prudence which makes him ‘unfit’ to be a soldier or citizen of a civilian society. He doesn’t think and act but immediately reacts to a situation.
Without even thinking twice he wreaks havoc at a police station by breaking bones of the authorities as if they were popsicle sticks. At the end of the action scene, he disarms the inspector and walks out of the station in slow motion with Vishal-Shekhar’s dramatic compositions playing in the backdrop.
He slaps his girlfriend Varsha’s (Anu Emmanuel) uncle right in front of her besides talking trash about her father. He’s not obedient to his own father. And it’s a refreshing change. He is not the first hero in Telugu cinema with daddy issues. But, what makes him different is his tendency to hit right back at his father every time.
Vamsi doesn’t make efforts to show him as a perfect family man, who is a tiger for the outside world but surrenders himself to docility when he steps his foot inside his house. It is one of the aspects of Vamsi’s writing that always hits home. His characters do not do anything that is out of their character.
The main conflict stems from the society’s pressure on Surya to do things that are against his natural self. And he even gives into it. He even turns a blind eye to a murder that happened before his eyes. That came as a big surprise for me for I was hoping that was the last button, which will end Surya’s sabbatical from the violence.
“Losing one’s character is like dying before the actual death,” Surya’s own words come back to him at the right time. And he finds out what he lost in the process of living to the expectation of the society. He has lost himself.
As he begins to rediscover his lost self, he nips a security threat to the country in the bud. It has something to do with planting the seed of hatred in the heart of an innocent. Without being too preachy about humanity, love, brotherhood and patriotism, Vamsi weaves this message seamlessly into the plot. And he ties all the ends very convincingly in the climax.
Allu Arjun aces the ill-tempered soldier act. Anu Emmanuel plays the hopeless romantic, who is blindly and madly in love with Surya. Arjun Sarja plays a leading physiologist and Surya’s father Ramakrishna Raju. He may have an answer to the emotional problems of others, but he fails to understand his own son and never miss a chance to remind Surya of how disappointed he is in him.
Vakkantham Vamsi has made an impressive directorial debut with Naa Peru Surya, Naa Illu India.