U TURN REVIEW

Samantha's latest movie U Turn has opened to positive reviews from the critics and audience. The brilliant story backed by fantastic performance from the cast have impressed the viewers.

Pawan Kumar, who wrote and directed the original, is helming the movie, which is simultaneously made in Tamil and Telugu languages. The film has Bhumika Chawla in a key role with Aadhi Pinisetty and Rahul Ravindran appearing in pivotal characters. Narain, Ravi Prakash and others are in the cast.

Rachana (Samantha Akkineni) is an intern journalist who decides to write an article on the history of people taking a U-turn on a city flyover and dying under mysterious circumstances. But she lands herself in a big problem. How she works with SI Nayak (Aadhi Pinisetty) to unravel the mystery forms the crux of the story .                                                                                           

U Turn’s strength is in the way the story builds up in the first half. There’s an element of shock and awe as the reporter is snatched away from her home and put in police station. For a while, the filmmaker keeps the audience guessing with sudden twists and developments in the investigation.

There are too many loopholes to make it look believable. For instance, when Samantha, who plays a reporter, is picked up randomly by the police, not once does she ask for her rights or for a lawyer. She doesn't even call her crime reporter (Rahul Ravindran), who she is friends with. The police clearly doesn’t have enough evidence to even bring her in, let alone detain her – and yet, they manage to keep her overnight.

The supernatural element in the film is revealed early and is too over-the-top to leave any impact on the viewers. It adds no value to the film, and in the end, U Turncomes across as a simple story told in an extremely complicated manner.

Samantha owns her character and is convincing as the scared, young journalist. She gets a meaty role and sinks her teeth into it. Aadi Pinisetty too impresses as the soft police officer, while Rahul Ravindran doesn’t get much scope to shine.

By the end of watching U Turn, the only words on the audiences’ minds would be ‘divider’, ‘U Turn’ and ‘flyover’. They are repeated over and over again, just to make sure the audience gets the point. But there’s always a risk of underestimating the audience. When you do that, quite often they just take the U Turn back to their homes.

                                             Meghna sunil kumar