David Billa: Bland and Insipid

Right from the very first sequence Chakri Tholeti gets it all wrong in David Billa, a prequel to Billa. His take on the past life of the Gangster is excruciatingly slow saved marginally by a controlled performance by Ajith Kumar and a decent sound track but there is only so much they can do to salvage this. Oh this is fast heading down south.

David Billa has four men credited for story and screenplay and while they had come up with stuff that had potential, the execution spoils it for everyone involved in it. Worse still, the inconsistency it suffers exposes the ineptness of its director in a song the Don dances in. It is one long and drawn out film and it certainly feels like one with the number of people the man has to kill on his way to become the Billa.

When in doubt Chakri borrows liberally from a list of successful gangster films and makes Ajith swagger after every killing. The sound track resonates, cinematography amuses but nothing ever works. And this film must have the blandest and the most insipid dialogues ever heard in Telugu Cinema. Some of that may be coz of the film being a dubbed one but that is no excuse for the kind of dialogue they had.

Except Ajith, no one registers. He has to wear a single expression of grimace for the entire duration of the film and he is too good an actor to disappoint on that one. They have a Russian Vilan with a poor accent who does a decent job when he is not talking. There is endless flow of blood and gore but one can not understand why Billa never kills them all the first time he meets them.

Except a song picturized in the Sin City style and a couple of Ajith moments, there is nothing in here.