Kuberaa: When Sekhar Kammula prefers Deva over Dhanush, the thriller drama almost falls in place

In Telugu filmmaker Sekhar Kammula’s Kuberaa, Deepak Tej (Nagarjuna) and Deva (Dhanush), are two sides of the same coin. The coin being the thriving capitalist society where a certain paper with Mahatma Gandhi’s face printed matters and determines who can survive and who cannot. Notice the soot that gets settled around the circumference of coins? That blackness being Neeraj Mitra, Jim Sarbh’s power and money-hungry business tycoon. You need to choose if you want to side with him to have a comfortable lifestyle, which a once-upon-a-time honest CBCID officer Deepak does, and thus becoming greyer even as tinges of humanity are left in him. Or be with Deva, who has nothing to lose and remains white, plain and simple, even as begging for alms is all that he has got. And why this film works beautifully is when Sekhar Kammula does not let a Nagarjuna or Dhanush overpower Deepak and Deva. When stars remain the background, they align and Kuberaa becomes a good watch. (SPOILERS AHEAD)

Kuberaa: When Deva overpowers Dhanush, Sekhar Kammula’s film falls in place

It takes a while to see Deva onscreen, simply because Kuberaa’s world is not that easy to present without backstories. There is Deepak, who had tried his best to be the vigilante the society needed to weed out bad seeds. But alas, when society turns its back on Deepak, he has no other go but to align with the black, in this case Neeraj, who is ruthless. Even as some humanity lingers within Deepak, what can one do when henchman Robo stoically asks if he is a Gandhi when the former reprimands him for misbehaving with a beggar woman who was brought to finish the financial scam.

Kuberaa begins with the deal between Deepak and Neeraj when the latter trusts the former to convert black money with the help of benamis. The benamis being the four beggars brought from different parts of the country, Dhanush’s Deva is one of them. But when Deva gets to know the plan orchestrated around their innocent lives, there takes off Kuberaa, a film that is a cat-and-mouse chase between the grey and white.

Also read: Kuberaa box office collection day 1: Dhanush solidifies his Telugu market by earning double of Tamil earnings

Sekhar Kammula takes a strong stand when he never lets Dhanush overpower Deva. And that is when all falls into place, picture perfect. It is an easy excuse to say that a man fighting for survival might become a superhuman with the ability to trash thousands. But through the course of Kuberaa’s three-hour-long runtime, the film never once wants you to get the peak of Dhanush. Deva runs, hides, threatens, begs, cries, and dares, but you see all that being done by Deva and Dhanush, the star never comes out. Essentially, when a star never warrants to carry on with his image onscreen as well, it is a field day for the story, and the win turns into laurels that Dhanush is now basking in.

Also read: Kuberaa: Why is it crucial that Dhanush-Nagarjuna film must win big

Despite shortcomings, Kuberaa tries to win

Kuberaa is essentially a story about how a newborn child of a beggar becomes the heir to crores of money. But it is also about pockets of humanity that Sekhar Kammula wants to explore. A runaway girl Sameera (Rashmika Mandanna) shows some kindness when Deva faints, and that is not the first time. She gets pulled into the scheme of things, that her already depressing life only gets worse and worse, every time she meets the beggar. Who would have thought that helping a beggar multiple times might make her stand on the brink of life one day, and make her fortunate on another? It seems Sekhar Kammula still wants seedlings to grow from a concrete jungle, and his Mumbai is not only filled with stock markets and financial districts, but also little children who get showered by love of vada pavs, thanks to Deva, whose seniority in begging comes to rescue and get quick alms.

Kuberaa does succumb to certain shortcomings. There are ambitious ideas backed with powerful performances, and the little moments add to much larger expressions. When Deepak sends off his family to Dubai at the time of danger, and a police man, who may take the wrong side, deduces the situation and acts fair, the ideas work and suit organically. But when the film broods on the lost ideas amid the heaviness of multiple acts and concepts, Kuberaa can become heavier on the shoulders. Nevertheless, Kuberaa is a masterfully crafted film that might have needed a little finer tuning, but still manages to impress you with its honest ideas and performances.