Vikrant Rona Review : Anup Bhandari's Unannounced Spiritual Prequel To RangiTaranga Is A Big Mess Of Mass Masala

Anup Bhandari got Superstar Kichcha Sudeep on board for his ambitious visual saga, Vikrant Rona. The film was supposed to be a 3D spectacle and an action adventure drama, but turns out to be a similar horror-thriller like his own RangiTaranga. RangiTaranga is a great terrifying thriller with typical minor faults that any Kannada film has, but there was no need to spoil the formula by using it again. Anup never spoke about VR being his version of the spiritual prequel of RangiTaranga. Nobody knows, and even I didn't know it until yesterday when he told me so. What Anup does is that he tries to fit RangiTaranga in a typical Kichcha Sudeep style mass entertainer. But we all know it's a misfit. A major section of Kannada audience has already seen RangiTaranga, so Vikrant Rona has got nothing for them. For others, it may work, but on a low level.The film is set in a remote village in the middle of a tropical rainforest where people witness a series of unexplainable events which they attribute to the supernatural. The arrival of a new, dynamic, and strong officer, Vikrant Rona (Kichcha Sudeep), creates hope for them, and he starts finding answers in his own style. But there is a catch to it. He is also searching for some personal answers, actually more for himself than for the villagers. Several flashback scenes reveal many secrets in the second half of the narrative, where you start noticing RangiTaranga's flavour and tricks. But there is a different story here with different characters, and it has nothing to do with horrors, as the film tries to suggest from the beginning.Vikrant Rona is brought down by its horrible screenwriting. In the first hour, you have no clue about the surroundings. You even try to find a specific genre of the film, like whether it is an action drama, adventure drama, horror drama, romantic drama or supernatural thriller. The mess continues till the intermission point, which suddenly puts life into the dead script. The second half has a better draft, though. At least it doesn't bore you to death like the first half of the film. There are many unnecessary scenes, cheap-humoured PJs, loud booze, useless songs, and good-for-nothing moments, which drag the film to its lower depths. You feel exhausted by the time you reach the end, and then there is a loud, noisy RangiTaranga trick to wake you up.Kichcha Sudeep has carried a massy image for years, and he continued the same with Vikrant Rona. This film required something else, something more, maybe, at least from what we expected before, but again the same issue of surrendering to the basics of mass entertainment. Nonetheless, Sudeep entertains you with some fight sequences and heroic dialogues, and that's all about it. Nirup Bhandari debuted with a bang in the Kannada cinema with Anup's debut film, RangiTaranga, and it seems that Anup has used him according to the non-believing image amongst Kannada viewers. He does what he is asked for and has a few surprising moments too. Neetha Ashok, Ravishankar Gowda, Vasuki Vaibhav, Madhusudan Rao and Chitkala Biradar are decent in their roles. Jacqueline Fernandez has a big role of 1 minute (excluding Item Number), and she looks attractive in every single frame.The technical aspects of the film have their own ups and downs. You enter the cinema hall to watch a 3D film, which hardly has any scope for 3D visuals. But yes, whenever 3D effects are applied, it makes sure that they do please you. However, you have to wait for them in the long 147-minute runtime. The dialogues are cheap on many occasions, the cinematography is good and the editing is confusing. The film could've been trimmed by 15 minutes, especially those boring, dragging songs. VR has many flaws that spoil the entire mood of watching a new kind of action adventure. For instance, Vikrant has one fight scene in the forest where he can see or sense what's coming from behind, even if it's a small spear while everything's dark out there. The same man can't do the same in the climax scene. WHY? What happens to the lady _____ Oops, sorry, no spoilers, right? Let's skip that part and that other part too. In short, let's skip the spoilers, i.e. faults.Anup Bhandari's direction seems lost in the first half, but then he grabs some of its hold in the second half, where he plays his old good tricks. The problem is that Vikrant Rona is too late. Had he made the same film right after RangiTaranga, or before, then it would have worked at the top level. Kannada cinema has improved a lot in the last 7-8 years with films like Ulivadaru Kadanthe, Lucia, Godhi Banna Sadharana Mykattu, RangiTaranga, and the mass hysteria of KGF. Vikrant Rona was supposed to take it a step higher, with advanced 3D visuals, but all it does is take you 10 years back to those old-school action masala flicks. As a whole, Vikrant Rona literally makes you cry with its outdated body while its soul keeps searching for a new modern body.