Review: Panjaa - lacks punch and tight script

Hyderabad: Violence, gunshots, killings, blood, bullets, celebrations, stunts, shootouts, escapes... you have seen them all ever so many times that you begin to sympathise with the guys and gals who have made this their career and are called upon to clear the same files in office every day.

For a story, there is a crazy war lord Bhagwan (Jackie Shroff) and his lieutenant Jai (Pawan Kalyan) who would make Crusoe's Friday blush with modesty. For conflict, there is Kulkarni (Atul Kulkarni) an aspiring Don out on a prowl and at home the infant terrible: his son Munna (Adivi Sesh).

There is need for body display so we have Jhanavi (Anjali Lavania) caressing her own body as if the camera is a voyeurist. She is obviously too bold and too much body to be heroine so they get in Sandhya (Sara Jane Dias) for some gentle drizzle and a soft romantic number.

Exit script writer, re enter stuntman. One long service of fights, bullets and suddenly the script drenched in blood has corpses all around and as you yawn. Vishnu Vardhan decides to give you a break.

In the idyll village away from the violent Bengal where blood was oozing till now, our star pair get space, time and script to romance. Power equations change fast, time for the underdog to get the better of Bhagwan. Floor crossing, more bullets glass splinters. Our script writer and stunt man are going through the revolving door.

They take the script their way depending whose turn it is to be in according to the revolving door. Vishnu Vardhan believes alteration is entertainment. The narration swings like a pendulum between violent city and romantic village. Travel futile, he decides to export violence into the village.

For assistance he has the aid of an enigmatic Paparayudu (Brahmanandam). Having dealt with a schizophrenic script, the script takes one final leap into mayhem and destruction.

Just when you thought Bhagwan and his strained perversity is catching up with Friday, it is the recently empowered Kulkarni who returns to the script with a near army full of guys, guns and swords.

After a stint of violence at Camp Kulkarni, the scene shifts. By now you have lost count of the guys dead. The numbers are as interesting and happening as criminal as the Satyam accounts.

Friday through all this floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee and of course behaves like the star he is.

Now we have a climax with a High Ham Bhagwan and cool shoot Friday pelting bullets and a confession which says : A film by Vishnu Vardhan. It is tragic that time and again that a film like this is enough to take on the gullible audience.

With absolutely not even a pretentious moment of originality you yawn your way thorough. You cannot even take a quick nap because of the bullets and the blood. In the midst of all this there is Pawan Kalyan who does more than his best to restore a semblance of sanity to the proceedings.

Even if you are not a Pawan Kalyan fan, your heart goes out to him and his restrained performance. Leave alone a Panjaa ' the film maker does not even have a gentle hold on the film and that is its undoing.