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Our country is constantly under attack by terrorists, and while we always see the forces battling the terrorists during the attacks, a newly formed special counter intelligence team decide to tackle the terrorists when the attacks are being masterminded.
CI Viay (Srikanth) is an officer who is a part of an elite team chosen by DCP V Rathod (Vinay). In the course of foiling one local goon attack bid, Vijay discovers a major threat to Hyderabad – a plan to cause damage and panic at the hearts of our very existence. The plot is masterminded by a Bangladeshi (surprise!!), whose team has its tentacles spread across the Hyderabad. As days progress, the team goes through constant leads and challenges to pin down the main mastermind.
No doubt, Srikanth Meka leads the film perfectly as usual, but it’s actually all the supporting cast who all together give you an enjoyable time in theatres, provided you love the genre of political-crime-thrillers. Srikanth gives his best. From his dialogue delivery to his body language while handling emotional sequence or action sequence, Srikanth lives the character of Vijay. Prudhvi as MLA Ravi is interesting along with Kota Srinivasa Rao who is pretty charismatic in his persona. Nikitha Thukral plays Srikanth’s wife role, is just okay, getting much lesser scope than the other characters. Vinay Fort may have less screen time but his performance reinstates the fact that good performances all about quality and not the length of a role. Ravi and Counter terrorist team are fine in their limited roles.
The story of Terror is not about terrorism, but it’s a cop story in a backdrop of Terrorist attack in Hyderabad. National Award winning Satish Kasetty, always tried to come up with a novel concept as in Hope and Kalavaramaye Madilo. But for some reasons he adapts an already very well exploited theme of Cop-Terrorists-Politicians nexus in Terror which was quite strange looking at his track record. May be he was too confident of the thrilling factor in the script to get him some favorable results. But unfortunately, all those shocks about the hidden characterizations come too late in the narration and therefore fail to work in a big way.
First half of Terror is fine, but very similar to the many terrorist based films in the past. In the same manner Srikanth is a famous rude cop, who loves to deal things with his gun and his team has a fresh entrant) who has just joined the police force. As seen in Ab Tak Chappan – Shagird, he is too innocent and afraid of killing for no reason at all. The film makes a fresh turn when CI Vijay and Rathod learn about a terrorist plot and Vijay gets kidnapped. But this kidnapping sequence only becomes weakest part of the film as the real brain behind the plan and its hidden purpose all remain pretty confused in the screenplay.
Post interval there are more interesting sequences in the script which will keep the viewers engrossed. But as I felt the twists come up rather too late in the script, which makes the movie a bit longer than actually required. Moreover, the sudden climax also leaves the viewer in a questioning state which is not all a good sign for the commercial prospect of the film. The abrupt change of roles in the screenplay sometimes looks like overdone. There are even many lapses of logic you will find yourself rolling your eyes repeatedly like, A Bagladeshi terrorist stays undercover for four long years and plans to create panic-damage and waits till a corrupt politician needed help of his political career; Even after believing Srikanth as major issue terrorist team doesn’t take the help of Politician to arrest or kill him at the venue; DCP never tries to track the course of Srikanth’s team post his escape from hide out; Even with parallel search by police team and terrorist group, Srikanth and team gets a VIP treatment at highest security places… etc.
Director Satish have extracted the very best from his team for his low budgeted thriller, be it actors or technicians. Coming to music, the best thing about this movie is the exclusion of songs, I was glad. There were too many decent scripts that faced a lot of criticism because of the inclusion of ridiculous songs. Being a terrorist based film one would expect an item number with his team dancing and drinking around. The National Award winning director has scored yet again in this area. Sai Karthik’s BGM didn’t intervene the film at any point. The subtle violin and saxophone made few scenes and monologues even more clearer. Cinematographer Vasali Shyamprasad has tried different angles from the normal and color tones give a nice setting to this political cop thriller. At 2 hours 24 minutes, Editor Basava Paidireddy seems to have full filled his part. Initially the suspense build up, but just when you expect things to heat up, we feel a bit let down. Production values are knavish despite being a low-budget film.
Terror will not be an Ab Tak Chappan that will be remembered in the years to come. Probably because the story is not novel and has often been retold in different ways. Instead, Terror will be remembered as a welcome change from the sea of commercial mindless potboilers that’s hurled at us every week at the movies. In all, Terror a good one-time watch for political-crime-thriller genre fans.
