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Review: Salaar — Yet Another Caricature Telugu Movie.
Why does it have to be like this?
I watched the newest Telugu Blockbuster Salaar in the Theater nearest to me in Hyderabad. That was only because I am too stingy to leave at halftime after paying that ticket price.
At the heart of it, Salaar is an ambitious plot. Think of it as a Bahubali meets Game of Thrones meets a random zombie apocalypse. Add in some context-less human rights abuse and rape so that the hero has something to do and someone to save.
If the whole point of the movie was to get some extremely stylish stills of Prabhas without actually revealing much of his face, then it has achieved the target. But it needn’t have been a movie, just an elaborate photo shoot with agonizing screams and cacophonous background music thrown in.
Centered around a fictional town called Khansaar, Salaar wants to tell a story of a heavily militarized feud for the throne spread across generations. However, what emerges from this attempt is a tangled mess that feels like the story was “made up as we go”.
The most annoying aspect of the film is certainly its unchanging, dreary color palette. From start to finish, the screen is doused in a sea of darkness that fails to capture the changing times or eras, a little like the lead Prabhas’…
