Post the stupendous success of the Baahubali franchise, Prabhas announced his next to be Saaho and all of his fans were expectantly waiting for this movie, which has now hit the screens today! Directed by Sujeeth and produced by Vamsi Krishna Reddy, Pramod Uppalapati and Bhushan Kumar for the UV Creations & T-Series banners, this movie has background score by Ghibran, with music by Tanishk Bagchi, Guru Randhawa, Badshah and Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy. Sreekar Prasad has taken care of the editing while R Madhi has handled the cinematography.
Roy (Jackie Shroff) is the head of the world's biggest crime syndicate and when he is taken out in an accident while trying to turn the syndicate legal and start their business in India. However, the location of the entire syndicate's wealth can only be identified by a secret black box which has been locked away in a secure position. There are powerful crime lords who would go to any lengths to get their hands on this Black Box and also the leader's position. Meanwhile, there are a number of mass robberies happening across Mumbai and the Police are left clueless as to who is behind these. Roy's long-lost son Vishwank (Arun Vijay) assumes the leadership position while undercover cop Ashok Chakravarthi (Prabhas) is tasked with identifying the criminal mastermind behind the robberies. However, not all that meets the eye, is as it seems. Watch Saaho to see how the plot unravels...
Prabhas looks as solid as ever and has pulled off quite a few action sequences but seems a little tired in more scenes than one. Shraddha Kapoor as Amritha Nair - the tough cop, is very pleasing on the eye and comes as a whiff of fresh air. She looks gorgeous and has carried off her portions very well. Arun Vijay seems to have been under-utilised and looks more like eye-candy (hunk) despite having proven he can do lots more in front of the camera. Murali Sharma has a meaty role and pulls it off with ease. However, quite a few top actors who have been cast in pivotal roles, seem to have very little screen space and in turn have very little scope to showcase their skills. This includes Jackie Shroff, Tinnu Anand, Mandira Bedi, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Chunky Pandey, Lal and Mahesh Manjrekar.
Director Sujeeth seems to have been highly impressed by the Fast & Furious movie series, Game of Thrones, The Italian Job and even our own Dhoom movies, as well as Ajith's Mankatha. Almost all the scenes and some of the twists seem to have been inspired from these earlier movies. When looked at individually, the scenes are acceptable but without seamless transition and lack of coherency lead to all of them falling flat on the whole. The pre-interval twist and the climax twist are mildly interesting but highly predictable. Sujeeth has wasted what could have been an amazing opportunity with a power-packed cast and limitless budget. The action sequences have been sleekly shot but at times just go on for way too long and there seems to be no logic behind most of them. Actually, logic seems to go for a toss, in most places. The songs are an entirely different story altogether. Though a couple of the songs are good, they are too many and very poorly placed in the movie's proceedings. The BGM is good but seems to be overpowering in quite a few places, especially the action sequences. The editing could have been far better and the overall length of the movie needs to be reduced by quite a lot. At a run-time of 2 hours and 51 minutes, Saaho is definitely sluggish.
Verdict: Extravagant, illogical and sluggish - a wasted opportunity!
