A big balloon of hype that deflates into nothingness

EXPRESS VIEWS

- ADITYA DEVULAPALLY

THE anticipation for They Call Him OG was its own pop-cultural event. Sujeeth, the director who once drowned Prabhas in Saaho, was now supposed to give Pawan Kalyan the Lokesh Kanagaraj treatment. Every teaser, every song, every poster was received as gospel by Telugu cinema’s faithful. For a while, we almost believed.

And then came the film, less thunder, more balloon-ish. On paper itself, the film sounds stuffed. Ojas Gambheera (Pawan Kalyan), trained in Japan under a Samurai master, finds himself drawn back to Mumbai after years in exile. Sathya Dada (Prakash Raj) is the father figure, the ports are the empire, and a mysterious container becomes the MacGuffin everyone is chasing. What's inside the container? Who cares. We've been here before. It’s the same, expired “estranged son returns to save the dynasty” story, reheated for the 1000th time for us Telugu audiences. Replace the setting, change the costume, throw in a Katana, remove the axe, get the guns, shuffle the villains, and voila, a ‘vibe gangster’ film!