Express News Service
Ten minutes into the film, Markandeya alias Mark (Sai Dharam Tej) dies in a car accident that he is seemingly responsible for. A shot of a white car tumbling across a highway cuts to darkness. We slowly see Mark emerge, unharmed, crying out for help. We then see the silhouette of a man, the superstar himself. Mark yells, “Who are you? Where am I? Show me your face.” No response. Then we get the cue. “Power ledha.” The lights shine on, revealing the power star himself, dressed in his famous Vayyari Bhama garb, dancing to the song. Then we see something downright farcical. The man is dancing, well, swaying lightly, as we see him morph into double, triple and multiple identical translucent figures, moving along to the acoustic hook from Vayyari… All the build-up and tease, followed by that one meta line acting as an OTP for the hero to emerge. Phata poster, nikla hero. Phir kya? It is all downhill from here, my friends, as the rest of the film goes on to replicate the heartbreaking mediocrity the Ameerpet edit of VFX Pawan Kalyans displayed.
For the most part, Bro is Mark’s story. He gets the Arjun Reddy style unlikeable-but-successful character arc. He finishes an entire workout but leaves his breakfast halfway. He will pay for his sisters’ education but never pays attention to them. He is also extremely fastidious with his time. He fires people on a whim because they have dared to waste his time. He sees his girlfriend Ramya (Ketika Sharma) as an appointment to be squeezed in between work and more work. Mark’s loved ones are the opportunity cost he voluntarily incurs for a coveted promotion in his company. Bro, in that way, is quite the apt title here, considering the whole ‘time is money, money is success’ mantra that drives Mark is also the beloved gospel of our podcast ‘bros’.
Samuthirakani and his writer-collaborator Trivikram are more inclined to present Mark in a grudgingly positive light, but more on that later. Pawan Kalyan is time, here. If Anne Hathaway suggested that time can be a physical dimension people can climb up and down like a hill in Interstellar — Samuthirakani wants us to know that time can also be reimagined as this demigod superstar we have all grown up loving.
But who really is this personification of time? This is where the movie entropies rapidly. Trivikram steps in to deliver some philosophical one-liners, which quickly turn into unsubtle digs against a certain Chief Minister. We also have Thaman’s rousing Sanskritised background score trying its best to defibrillate this otherwise comatose film. When we combine Thaman’s contributions with the fact that Bro is alternatively titled Bro The Avatar — we might just be talking about Kaala Bhairava, the Shaivite manifestation of time, reality and retribution. But this is a wasted conclusion since we see Pawan Kalyan’s character borrow his character traits from his own film-mythos-graph. In OMG (Pawan Kalyan features in this film’s Telugu remake), Akshay Kumar’s Sri Krishna apes the character traits of the latter. So we see this actor play the flute, carry a peacock feather keychain and inhale blocks of butter from Paresh Rawal’s fridge. But here, Pawan Kalyan’s Time mowa bro is a highlights reel of the actor in his prime. He prefers chai from a cutting glass (like his character from Thammudu), sings Aadavari Matalaku Ardhale Verule in a car and dances to Jalsa Jalsa in a pub. Costume designer Neeta Lulla chimes into the film’s overall meta-ness, her costumes are an ode to the actor’s clutter-breaking, forever cool fits from the 2000s.
At this point, a senior star paying meta lip service to his older, more iconic roles is not new. Lokesh Kanagaraj did it with Kamal Haasan in Vikram. Closer home, Bobby Kolli pulled it off with clap backs to vintage Chiranjeevi in Waltair Veerayya. But the trick misfires with Bro, especially considering Kushi, Jalsa and Tholi Prema had some wide and successful re-releases at a time as recent as last year. Speaking of which, how did a song from Bheemla Nayak feature in this vintage mix? I get that time is relative and stories are subjective, but the only way ‘one year back’ would count as vintage is if human beings had a lifespan of three years. The shtick feels a lot more tired when you realise that Pawan Kalyan is running his own experiments with time, using his past career to propel his future one — cinema be damned.
The rest of the film does little to help its own case. Bro is a remake of a Tamil feature that was once originally a play, but that never meant actors should continue to stay in a single place, swapping the stage for endless green screenshots. Sai Dharam Tej is equally immobile in his acting, as he pantomimes in tandem with Pawan Kalyan’s sluggish and disinterested demeanour.
Surprisingly, Mark’s family left a greater impression on me than Tej and Pawan Kalyan. There is a sister who knows she is unfairly resented, but still respects her brother. The other sister and brother hide their own relationships, despite Mark being open with his. The film’s only redeeming grace is the way it treats patriarchy. Now when I say patriarchy, I don’t mean it in the way that word has earned its demonic status today. I mean it quite literally. Mark is the oldest child of his family, its sole breadwinner and patriarch after their father’s demise. When he rises to lecture the women in his household, the girls see their father. The mother sees her own father. Mark is riddled with anxiety, about getting his siblings ‘settled’. Turns out, his family needs no help from him. In one of the film’s only aha! moments, we see the ‘nobody needing Mark’ angle take a deterministic turn.
And when Mark realises that it is he who needs his family more than the other way round, he begins to redeem himself. The film though, not so much. This is an interesting time for Pawan Kalyan fans, to watch him transition from a place that made him the power star to a place that could give him actual power. We have seen him build a meta-narrative beneficial for politics in both Vakeel Saab and Bheemla Nayak. But Bro is a slippery beast. Star power means showing greatness, something mortals cannot achieve. But we have Pawan Kalyan in a film that has come down to our level, instead of us wishing to reach theirs, with all the Jaya Surya and Mavayya meme clapbacks.
It is not easy at all to watch this ‘torchbearer’ feature in a rather torturous film. It feels much more insulting when the star is content with scheduling this piecemeal effort film between politics the way Mark scheduled his time between work for Ramya. We have had 25 glorious years with Pawan Kalyan. Maybe, our time is over.
BRO
Cast: Pawan Kalyan, Sai Dharam Tej, Ketika Sharma, Priya Prakash Warrier, Rohini Molleti
Director: Samuthirakani
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