Anusha's Blog

Recently I was watching an episode of Law & Order in which a cop gets shot once in his gut; he crashes to the floor with pain and couldn’t even move. In another instance, a cop gets a blow (punch) to his head and blanks out for a couple of seconds before he retreats. It made me think of the action sequences in Telugu Cinema, where the actor endures multiple blows, gun shots and bomb blasts without much damage.

What is the last Telugu Action movie, with a noted actor as the main character, that doesn’t have the actor doing something extraordinary for his movie? Movie makers seem to be under the impression that “super-power” performances by actors are a necessary part of the movie. However, something they don’t seem to understand is that such performances make the scenes unnatural and make a good movie into a degraded one or even a bogus one.

The latest movie that explains this scenario is Adurs. In the movie, Jr. NTR did stunts that are extraordinary. For the introduction, he flies out of a blasting container, unscratched. Excluding the intro, the rest of the fights in the movie are to the ordinary with bunch of gun violence, which is great. Then he jumps for a huge tower and still survives without a scratch. Later there are a couple fight sequences where he lifts and throws humans around like puppets. In addition to that, he flies around like some superman. It wasn’t really necessary to have a father flashback, which is copied from Krrish. Some fights in this movie were to the extreme. As it is Jr. NTR’s movie all the extraordinary things are needed, right? No. The movie would have done just fine without the crazy action sequences. Movie makers need to understand that their target audience are not kids, but adults, who will find such super stunts hard to digest.

If movie makers want to have their actors fly around, they should try making some super hero series of Super Man or Spider Man, so that they have a perfect explanation to why a the actor can fly around, take on 10 people at the same time or even make objects stop in midair. Even with super hero series we might still have a problem. Another thing that kills such stunts by actors is the poor usage or ropes. As I have mentioned in the Varudu review that the use of ropes in Telugu cinema has become unnecessary; moreover, it makes the scenes look more fake. For instance, during the basketball game in the beginning, Allu Arjun makes extraordinary shots, which is completely unnecessary. When adding such stunts to the movie, directors need to be careful in making scenes more plausible. When audience see the costumes hang awkwardly and the actors flying in odd positions, it destroys the feel of the scene.

Actors don’t need to stop performing stunts; they just need to perform good and believable stunts rather than super hero stunts, unless of course they are acting as one. For example, good stunts are what Manoj did in Nenu Meeku Telusa. About 40 minutes into the movie, he tries to chase and run away from the attackers and in the process he performs some great jumps and attacks that are completely natural, exciting and amazing at the same time.

When making a movie, one should want the audience to be involved in the movie, rather than feel disconnected with it. When watching an actor perform stunts, the audience should not be led to think about how the actor is doing, but feel the emotion of the character. With extraordinary stunts such feel will be hard to achieve. When doing a movie, stunts are something movie makers need to take time with to make them more natural.

Note: The use of the word “extraordinary” in this article is used with a negative connotation. I really enjoyed the movie Adurs for its comedy, just letting the readers know I don’t have anything against the movie or Jr. NTR as an actor.

image courtesy of funnyfree