Daaku Maharaaj

Routine south Indian movie, where hero fights to save a village or a family with some backstory and few elevation scenes.

Positives: 1. Balakrishna performance 2. Thaman background score 3. No cringe comedy between hero and other characters 4. No unnecessary between hero and heroine 5. All the elevations worked well because of Balayya's screen presence

Negatives: 1. No snakes and ladder game between hero and villain. Always hero wins as in all the south Indian movies 2. Few emotions didn't work well 3. Few scenes in the second half are not that engaging and felt bore 4. Multiple villains just to extend the storyline and have more fights 5. Few illogical scenes from direction point of view.

The first half of the movie delivers while the second half is a bit dragged. The portrayal of balayya is new and the director added the style and flavour of lokesh kanagaraj movies.

Balayya came out of his comfort to take such risk of making a movie that could have ended a disaster if not for Bobby koli. The acting is nice and music is good.

This movie proves that balayya is never in his peak but he is his peak. The movie did not miss the commercial elements. But urvashi rautela's role was shortened and it was good that way, otherwise it would have spoiled the work. Though it may feel overdramatic sometimes it is perfect for the sankranti season to have mass movie like this.

A good movie if you can enjoy keeping the logics and all other things behind. It was better than most balayya's movies in the past ten years.

I don't understand why people are so obsessed with other movies this sankranti because people were ready to see all the things balayya use to do back then but does not want to watch him in a role where he has the scope to act good which he did.

The movie is a surprise to me. Don't listen to the negative reviews and watch it with a blank mind.

But the balayya in the first half is fire. Want more like this from balayya.

Go and enjoy the movie.

I don't know if it's too much to ask a basic, decent movie, with bare minimum emotional touch, watching big hero movie from Telugu is frustrating

Balakrishna does everything in his usual style, albeit with the loudness toned down. Urvashi's Butts has got more screentime than her face, Pragya does nothing, Shraddha Srinath surprisingly has got a decent role and did well. Bobby Deol except for fighting cigarettes does nothing.

Technically, movie is super slick with solid cinematography by Vijay Karthik, rousing score by Thaman, fair work by editor Ruben, production values are fine for a Balayya film.

Coming to writer-director Bobby Kolli, don't know how he keeps churning out such half baked movies on a consistent basis, might do commercially well, but they are far from satisfactory.

BOTTOMLINE : It's neither VIKRAM nor JAILER.

I actually wanted to give a 6.5, since it's not possible, I gave it a 7. In first half, Protagonist does etc things like protecting, fighting, etc but doesn't give a proper reason. It captivates our curious minds. Second half gives a proper flashback and answers all our questions in the first half. In last 20 minutes of the movie, the plot comes to present time. Protagonist kills antagonist hence the movie ends 🤷. Just like the lead actor's N Balakrishna previous movies, he gets all that unnecessary hype like his entrances with sandstorm, earthquakes, etc. Despite these similarities, these movie's inner plot is interesting and has a strong sense of justice. Also there's no boring clips in the whole length. That's what actually makes it watchable despite it's repetitive plot.

Bobby seems to have picked up where he left his villainous role in animal movie.

These type of movies need a ruthless villain and Bobby delivers, your all familiar with Balakrishna style, larger than life character.

The movie is a good weekend entertainer, with a recycled storyline of good vs evil.

The director's of south have found a winning formula of cramming 2 stories into one movie, although highly entertaining and your getting more movie for your buck. Not every movie can pull this off and this is where daaku maharaj leaves you yearning for more.

This movie would have been a solid 10 but, storyline seems rather rushed.