Bruce Lee – The Fighter Telugu Movie Review

The final scene in the film with the horse ride I guess sums up the attitude of Srinu Vaitla who holds back no punch and clearly declares that the audience has been taken for a ride. 150 plus minutes of dare dash and high voltage destruction at the hands of a single person is the distance the film maker is willing to or is designed to walk and project the scion of the family. Stars hardly make films. They perpetuate images, they build space for their opulence and call it creativity or entertainment. Add nepotism to the scheme and the picture is complete. It is easy to play hero when life is so perfectly scripted.
Young siblings have varying sensitivity quotients. Dad Rama Chander (Rao Ramesh) can only afford one child at DPS and so prefers his son. The lad however feigns failure to ensure he translates the dreams in the eyes of sister. Bro Karthik a la Bruce Lee (Ram Charan) thus sacrifices his future at the altar of sibling Kavya’s dreams. Kavya (Kriti Karbanda) dreams of becoming the district collector. Bruce Lee joins the film industry as a stunt man. He falls in love with Ria (Rukul Preet Singh). Ram Chander is busy with his middle class life always spiting son for his failures and singing praises for his daughter who is the Collector in the making. His elder brother (Tanekalla Bharani) however has smelt the rat and called the bluff but in private. Ram chander works for Vasundhara Pharmacy which is owned by Jairaj (Sampath Raj) and his wife (Nadiya). There son Rahul (Rahul Ravindran) is engaged to marry Ria. Wait the story is not all that simple. We have the purpose less bad guy Deepak Raj (Arun Vijay) who tries hard to stay away from bullet filled guns and imitating Hrithik Roshan. Bad crosses path with good. The likes of Mukesh Rishi, Shinde, Amitabh Pradhan, walk in as characters as real as cardboard.
The good vs bad story stretches for over two and half hours in the midst of romantic interludes with the heroine in drapes and lingerie mode. She even wears noodles stripes for a dress and is extremely dumb witted to not realise that her lover boy is not a police officer as she imagines him to be. So we have a dad who does not know about his son, a lady who does not her fiancé, a wife who is clueless about her plotting hubby, a police officer who does not know his colleagues or his superiors, another police officer who does not know his duties. Then we have twins who we think are one and a single guy who some think are twins!!
As you labour to put these loose ends together rather than just give up, the film draws you to a climax which is actually contrived to a fault and is a damp squib. I suspect the audience is waiting for most of the time in the hope of seeing the mega star on the silver screen after the long hiatus. Sampath Raj, Thanikella Bharani, Rao Ramesh are sincere in etching some life into their characters. Ram Charan tries hard but simply does not have the screen presence to take the film on his shoulder. The script is too full of predictable holes for him to survive. The heroine is so bush getting into her lingerie and dancing to tunes that the film makes no difference to her. As the sister we have Kriti Karbanda hopeless miscast. Arun Vijay too is far from convincing. For comedy we have Brahmanandam, Ali, Vennella Kishore – none making any impacting moments. On the other hand, it is only Saptagiri who gives the script some light moments.
Speaking for myself the song Run run has some hidden message – if only you are willing to take it.
Rating 2 stars
+ some twists and the lighter moments
– Too long and predictable.