What’s it about?
Arjun Prasad (Balakrishna), a chairperson of an IT company called ASEAN, ventures into another business and takes up a project in Uttar Pradesh despite her mother Sarojini (Jayasudha) warns him not to step in that state. A UP minister’s men misbehaved with Sarojini a couple of years ago. When Arjun Prasad steps in the project site, the local people are surprised to see their Dharma is back. Who is Dharma? Why are they calling Arjun Prasad as Dharma?
Analysis
Just read the basic story of this movie and your immediate reaction would be: ‘arre, didn’t we see many such movies some twenty years ago.” Yes, we all did. ‘Ruler’, the latest film from the combination of director KS Ravi Kumar and Balakrishna is a lousy attempt to put an old story in an old bottle.
The content has gone by the expiry date; the packaging is also rotten. Forget about the story, the screenplay, at least you expect one or two better scenes, that are refreshingly new or told with a contemporary touch. It is as if the writers and director have competed with each other to come up with as many senseless sequences as they could imagine.
The romantic threads (first half focuses on Balakrishna and Sonal and the second half on Balakrishna and Vedhika) are totally cringeworthy. And the so-called comedy is in stinking bad taste.
The entire first half occupies showcasing Balakrishna as a software company owner and Sonal trying to steal data from him. Post-interval, the movie talks about UP goons and the plight of Telugu farmers settled in a village in UP with Balayya appearing as a ferocious cop. But no portion makes sense. Lectures for the sake of lecturing, dialogues for the sake of it, no coherence at all.
Balakrishna’s appearance in the first half is okay but his getup as a police officer is bad due to uneven changes in his body (as he lost weight). Sonal Chauhan and Vedhika are there for skin show. Bhumika is okay in a key role that appears in the second half.
Music is mediocre. Cinematography is neat. Both writing and direction are bad.
Bottom-line: Nandamuri Balakrishna’s ‘Ruler’ ranks among this year’s worst movies.
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