“Saaho” Review: Powerfully Acted, Poorly Executed

Mohnish Singh |Aug 30, 2019

Starring Prabhas and Shraddha Kapoor in principal roles, “Saaho” is one of the hotly anticipated films of 2019. Let’s find out whether or not it lives up to the high expectations of the audience.

After a long wait, Prabhas and Shraddha Kapoor’s Saaho finally entered theatres on 30^th August.

A lot of expectations are riding on the film simply because it is being touted as the biggest action entertainer of India and stars Prabhas, who became a national phenomenon after the huge success of Baahubali: The Beginning (2015) and Baahubali: The Conclusion (2017).

Let’s find out whether or not the film meets the audience’s expectations.

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What Saaho Is All About?

The Waaji city boasts of the most powerful crime syndicate in the world, a syndicate that has too many mafias. But nobody knows who is trustworthy and who is not. On an unfortunate day, Roy (Jackie Shroff), the undisputed king of the business, is murdered by Devaraj (Chunky Panday) and his son Vishwank (Arun Vijay) is anointed the heir.

The story crosses paths with a high-profile robbery in Mumbai. Undercover cop Ashok Chakravarthi (Prabhas) takes the case in his hand. Inspector Amrita Nair (Shraddha Kapoor) joins him on the mission and both set out to find the man behind the robbery and its mysterious collection with the crime empire of the Waaji city. What happens next forms the crux of the story.

What’s Hot?

Prabhas and Shraddha Kapoor do justice to their roles in the film. Since the entire movie revolves around Prabhas’ character, he gets the maximum screen time and makes most of it. The handsome star fits the bill perfectly as his towering physique and body language make him look convincing in his part.

Shraddha Kapoor as cop Amrita Nair is good. She puts her light body to perfect use and performs some high-octane action sequences with ease. The actress manages to look gorgeous throughout, despite being a no-nonsense cop.

The lead cast is ably supported by character actors like Murali Sharma, Mandira Bedi, Chunky Panday and Neil Nitin Mukesh. Chunky Panday stands out as Devraj.

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Coming to technical aspects of the film, brilliantly choreographed, over-the-top action sequences will give you the sort of visual experience that no other Indian film would have probably offered you before. It delivers on the non-stop fantastical action.

Director Sujeeth knows how to stage action. Cinematography is excellent.

What’s Not?

Saaho is a missed opportunity. It suffers highly from a bloated and trite script that does little to engage the audience. The story is paper-thin with an absolute absence of novelty. Director Sujeeth seems to have focused so much on the grandeur of the film than he totally ignored the most essential part- storyline.

The screenplay is convoluted and senseless, to say the least. Besides attention-getting set pieces and perfectly choreographed action sequences, there is nothing that can hold your attention for long.

Prabhas and Shraddha Kapoor do well, but the chemistry between the two is missing. There is no spark in their chemistry. Also, Prabhas should not have opted for dubbing in Hindi as the whole exercise does not yield favourable results.

With a runtime of 174 minutes, Saaho is insufferably long. It could have easily been trimmed by 30-40 minutes. Pacing is poor and so is the background score of the film.

Final Verdict

Saaho is more stylish than meaningful. Despite having everything at its disposal, from great acting talents to technology to a colossal budget, the movie just fails to deliver. Most of the things happening on celluloid are incoherent and hard to swallow most of the times.

Saaho is a thriller you better miss seeing in theatres. I am going with 2 stars.