A statutory warning: Whatever you do, don't for goodness' sake, go to watch the Kannada movie Black with memories of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's classic movie of the same name that starred Amithabh Bachchan.
This Kannada movie is so badly made that you wouldn't even remember one good sequence after coming out of the theatre.
Black film director M Mahendar is a techie working for a big firm, but preferred to become a director because of his passion for films. It would have been better if he had restricted his passion to just watching films for it seems he has bitten off more than he can chew.
The result is that Black, which has a 'revolutionary' theme, ends up as a terribly weak film with uninspiring performances from artists, hackneyed plot and shoddy technical work.
Bharat, Lakshmi, Ani, Chethan and Kishor form a group called Black which goes on a killing spree. The group's victims are some of the most corrupt people in the city which include a minister, an excise commissioner and a contractor. The whole story behind the killings is unravelled when a senior Police officer investigates the killings.
In what would have been a thriller, everything connected with the film however goes horribly wrong starting with the performances of the new artists to the contribution by the film's technicians. Even the so called item song by Abhinaya Shri lacks imagination.
Camera work and editing are below the current standards seen in Kannada films. The dialogues are too bookish to be digested. Music by Bobby is slightly better and the song rendered by 72-year-old Saraswathi Naidu is hummable.
Except for Kishor and to a little extent Manasi, the rest of the cast fails to make any impression. Experienced television actor like Jayashree too has been wasted. Best to avoid this one.
Rediff Rating: