Custody Twitter review: Naga Chaitanya-Venkat Prabhu’s film opens to mixed reviews, few fans are impressed

Naga Chaitanya and director Venkat Prabhu are testing new waters with their cop thriller Custody today. The bilingual marks the actor’s Tamil debut while it’s also the filmmakers entry into the Telugu industry. Produced by Srinivasaa Chitturi under Srinivasaa Silver Screen, the film features Krithi Shetty, Arvind Swami, Priya Mani, Sampath, Vennela Kishore and Sarath Kumar in key roles.

The film’s story revolves around an underdog constable Shiva, who meets with a minor road accident owing to a collision with a car that has two warring men - George, a CBI officer and Raju, a crooked gangster. Unsure about their identities, Shiva locks them up in a jail. When there’s pressure from superiors to kill Raju, he’ll do everything to protect him against all odds and let truth prevail.

Amidst heavy expectations from Tamil and Telugu markets, Custody released worldwide today. On the whole, the film opened to mixed reviews from audiences in both regions. While a few hailed Venkat Prabhu’s knack for comedy, the unique premise and the action choreography, many had issues with the latter half of the cop thriller, which they said, was diluted by unnecessary subplots.

Some of the loyal Akkineni fans felt there was an attempt by many to spread negative talk around the film and opined Custody had enough to merit a big-screen experience. They applauded Chaitanya’s decision to pick an unusual script and surrender to the director. The music by Ilaiyaraaja and Yuvan Shankar Raja has disappointed a handful of viewers too.

SR Kathir cranked the camera for the film which had production design by Rajeevan and was edited by Venkat Raajen. DY Satya Narayana is the art director. Abburi Ravi wrote the Telugu dialogues for the same with Stun Shiva, Mahesh Mathew choreographing the action sequences. Jeeva, Goparaju Ramana, Anandhi, Premi Vishwanath also essayed brief characters in the thriller.