Maharaja



It was 2a.m. in the morning on June 21, 2024. The wife and child had gone to sleep, and it was decision time for me. "Should I go to sleep, or should I watch something?", was the question on my mind. I seldom get a 2 hour window where I can watch a movie uninterrupted at home, and I decided to go for it.

As I opened Netflix, I saw that the top movie on the platform was Maharaja. For the previous couple of days before, I saw the enormous amounts of praise this movie was getting online. It also got recommended by a friend who was a movie maker, and her opinions on movies is something I admire a lot. This was the movie I was going to watch.

The movie begins with a tragedy that no family should go through. There however is a a ray of hope that makes the viewer root for the protagonist and his child. What happens next seem to be a series of unrelated events that leave the viewer confused with the direction the movie is taking. This confusion is further compounded by the non-linear story telling. The slow burn of the movie begins to take shape through gory and disturbing scenes of the antagonists, who are portrayed as despicable people with twisted minds. The development of all the main characters is done well in short scenes that gives an insight into their personalities.

The showdown that takes place at the climax, which lasts for about 20 minutes, is one which I wish I can forget every time and watch afresh.

Maharaja, in my opinion, is the best movie to be released this year. I will keep an eye out for more of Vijay Setupathi's movies, and moreover, I will start to keep an eye out for the work that Nithilan Saminathan will do going forward.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Ghost movie review

Image
One look at the poster of the Akkineni Nagarjuna starrer, The Ghost, where a group of people clad in suits seem to be begging for forgiveness in front of the protagonist, whose stature seems as tall as Big Ben which is in the background, seems to suggest that it is a movie about an ex special ops guy who seems to be on a vengeful mission. It was released the same day as the Chiranjeevi and Salman Khan starrer, Godfather, but disappeared from theaters like the name of the movie. The main issue with the movie is that there is no consistency or single theme that the movie wanted to explore. Nagarjuna plays the role of an Interpol field agent in Dubai, who has anger management issues because of mental trauma that he suffered as a child. Following a botched rescue mission, he resigns from his job, breaks up with his fellow agent, who also happens to be his girlfriend, and apparently decides to wipe out the underworld from Dubai as a free agent. The viewer also finds out that the protagoni
Read more

Godfather (2022 movie) review

Image
I am a lifelong fan of Chiranjeevi's movies. The fandom started in the early 90s with the movie Gang Leader , and continued till the mid 2000s. I started to watch movies from other languages and industries at that point of time, and Chiranjeevi's increased push into the world of politics made me lose interest in his movies. All that changed when his 150th movie, Khaidi number 150 was released. I watched it on the day it released. The movie was uninspiring though, with the actor reprising some of his tropes that took him to the top, which felt jaded and out of place in a newer context and generation. The worst part of the movie was the character of Kajal Aggarwal , who was in the movie to only be the love interest of Chiranjeevi , despite being half his age,  and dance next to him. His next movies,  Sye Raa Narasimha Reddy  and Acharya  had a better approaches and did not portray any love interest of Chiranjeevi, but the overall tone of the characters where they are shown as fl
Read more

Tiger Nageswara Rao

Image
  This movie is a complete mess, a mess so bad that it seems like it was made in two parts. The first part seems to have been directed by some dude who wanted to show the protagonist as Arjun Reddy on steroids. Think of every terrible thing a man can do, cutting off the head of his father to prevent him from being recognized and the trail leading to the capture of their gang, drinking donkey blood as they believe that it will give them amazing stamina and speed to get away from cops, kicking ladies in the stomach, getting aroused by every woman he sees and wanting to bed them, and then letting go of them after the act, to the extent of him being asked by a woman about why he does not come around to her establishment, and he says, "I do not like eating again that I have already tasted". After about half the movie was shot, the dude whose responsibility was to direct the second half looked at what the dude in the first half did, scratched his head at the mess that was created,
Read more