MOVIE REVIEW – VEERAPPAN (None like him ever existed) 2016
2.5 stars out of 5
VEERAPPAN (None Like Him Ever Existed) is a 2016 Indian biographical film directed by Ram Gopal Varma.

Sandeep Bhardwaj looks uncannily like Veerappan, an outlaw, a sandalwood smuggler, who created such terror in the jungles of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu that even the specially set up and well equipped Task Forces couldn’t nab him. No doubt, the film has scenic locations : dense jungles, lush-green forests, ravines and waterfalls, through which Veerappan and his gang rampage, killing humans and tuskers and felling sandalwood trees.

But ‘Veerappan’, based on his own Kannada ‘Killing Veerappan’, never reaches even close to that film. What surprises me, the earlier movie by the same director "Killing Veerappan" garnered much more praise and was undoubtedly a better crafted movie. Why he took the pain of shooting another version. Every aspect of the earlier movie in Kannada is far better than the present movie, be it dialogue delivery of the actors, screenplay, locations etc. At no point in the film does one get the impression that RGV might be anywhere near regaining his lost touch. The maker of Satya andCompany is nowhere in sight in this messy, pedestrian thriller.

The story of this movie is written from the cop’s point of view and because of which life & sufferings of STF personnel is projected more and Veerappan and his personal life is missing and at no point of the time Veerappan’s Robinhood type image as alleged by many sympathizers of the Veerapan.

The music might still have been forgivable, but Joshi’s expressionlessness and Lisa Ray’s excessive expressions are too much to take. Joshi of course is the film’s producer (his wife Raina’s name appears in the credits though), so RGV most probably did not have a choice with him. But what accounts for the casting of Ray? Her limitations are further underlined by the fact that in many scenes she is placed opposite the very natural Usha Jadhav playing Veerappan’s wife Muthulakshmi.

The film’s deficiencies are most unfortunate because in its pluses we get a glimpse of the old Ramu that we all once knew and loved, the man who gave us pathbreaking gangster and crime flicks such as Shiva, Satya and Company.