Razor is among this week's theatrical releases. Since actor-director Ravi Babu took pot shots at the Telugu film industry in the run up to the movie's release, Razor's success became a matter of honour for him. While it's a washout (going by Day 1 openings) at the box office, let's take a look into how hopeless the movie is.
Plot:
Driven by an insatiable thirst for power, Home Minister Kanakaraju (Veeranna Chowdary) orchestrates the assassination of the state’s Chief Minister after a failed bid to seize his seat. However, the perfect crime is compromised when Kanakaraju and his son realize the murder was inadvertently recorded by Vishnu (Tanish), a local CCTV business owner. In a ruthless attempt to bury the evidence, the duo hunts down and brutally kills Vishnu and his wife. The heart of the story follows their young daughter, Teju (Baby Tejal Vikhyathi), the sole remaining witness to the atrocity. Her only hope for survival lies with Rudra Pratap (Ravi Babu), a stoic pet groomer who steps in to protect her from the political hunters closing in.
Post-Mortem:
A girl child in danger from the powers-that-be is an age-old plot point in our cinema. How does actor-director Ravi Babu fortify such a dated premise? By presenting himself as the hero material we have been too busy to notice. Never in his decades-long career did he get to champion his own cause. He finally does and the result is unenviable/unviable.
In Razor, instead of gravity-defying fights, Ravi Babu goes for options that make such action irrelevant. He straight up slices bodies into half before the sharp object he is wielding can figure out what is happening. Razor's gratuitous violence doesn't even feel organic. It feels borrowed right from the word go.
The male lead relies on three young tech geeks (Pranavi Manukonda and others) to outsmart the wannabe Chief Minister. Every five minutes, some or the other character is frantically keying in codes, scratching their head, trying to decipher codes, decode riddles, etc. The visuals are tiresome. And, funnily, the geeks remain chilled out during the existential crisis, addressing Google as "Google Babai" (as opposed to "Google Thalli", because Ravi Babu is in a hyper-masculine mood).
The script relies solely on the girl child for emotions. The singular idea, clichéd as it is, goes for a toss in the second half. Even the saviour-hero shows signs of weariness and ceases to shower his affection on her.
The laziness of Satyanand's screenplay is evident every time the powerful antagonist fails to behave like an adult. He is scared of leaving any shred of evidence, but sends his men to a police station to hoodwink the cops without any precautions. And then, the idiot sends drones to a scene of crime as if he were a wedding planner tasked with covering an event. His men take forever to realize that they can track the location of the hackers working for the good side. And all the circumspection shown by the Home Minister in preventing the police from knowing about his mission falls apart when one of his men, just like that, reveals everything to a cop. With no consequences.
The background score is relentless. The lack of silent moments gives you a pounding headache.
Closing Remarks:
Razor is a blunt instrument of a movie that mistakes gratuitous gore for edgy filmmaking. Despite Ravi Babu’s attempts to frame himself as a stoic protector, the film is crippled by a dated, clichéd plot and a screenplay so lazy it borders on logic-defying.
