Attahaasa

This movie is a fantastic biopic of Veerappan - the sandalwood smuggler/forest brigand etc who was holed up in the forests connecting Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka for over 20 years.

The movie starts with his origins as one who worked as a henchman killing elephants for their ivory tusks and later branches into sandalwood smuggling and builds his own gang.

The director has spent a good amount of time in the initial stages to show Veerappan's growth which started off by killing various forest officers and went all the way to the kidnapping of the famous Kannada star Rajkumar. Suresh Oberoi has done a really good impression of Rajkumar excepting the nose :).

Only later is Arjun brought into the picture as the DGP Vijay Kumar appointed to head the STF (Special Task Force). The story then moves to the efforts take by the DGP towards building an intelligence network, spies, sending undercover officers etc.

Quite obviously it is not possible to shrink 20 years in a 2 hour movie but kudos to the director for managing to do this in a commendable manner. The story builds at a steady pace and again, movies like demonstrate that you don't need those item numbers and song-dance sequences for a movie to succeed.

There is obviously a lot of research that has gone into this movie and that is shown in the end credits. Kishore has done a fantastic job of Veerappan. It is not just the famous mustache but the overall appearance. The rest of the cast has also be chosen well. But given that this is about Veerappan, Kishore carries the entire movie without a hitch.