Linga Telugu Movie
Lakshmi (Anushka) is a TV Reporter who helps a small thief Lingaa (Rajinikanth) and his friends to come out of jail on a condition that he should open a temple built by his grand father Raja Lingeswara (Rajinikanth) in Singanur village. Lingaa does not like his grand father who left him in poverty but agrees to come to the village just for the sake of releasing from jail. The story then dates back to Britishers time in India. Raja Lingeswara, scion of a royal family who is appointed as the collector of Singanur. Despite resistance from the Britishers, he builds a dam to solve the drought in the village. However once the dam is complete, Lingeswara leaves the place and villagers lock the temple. What is the reason for the lock out? How Linga helped to solve the village's problems? has to be seen on the screen.
It is a one man show by Rajinikanth in the entire film in different characters. Watching his mannerisms especially in the pre-independence character is a treat. It is also really a wonder to see the energy he put in dances at such a ripe age. Anushka looks over weight in the film and also her character does not have enough weight-age. Sonakshi Sinha is fine in her Southern debut, dubbing suited character well. Even the presence of Santhanam, Karunakaran and Brahmanandam did not tickle the audience. Kasi Viswanath, Vijay Kumar, Dev Gill, Ponvannan are okay in their limited roles. Jagapati Babu is totally wasted.
Lingaa has an uncanny resemblance to Chiranjeevi's Indra. The major flaw with the story is the attempt to touch many things at once like linking of national rivers and timeworn social angle etc. The film with too many conflict points end up as neither a strong message film nor an entertainer. KS Ravi Kumar totally misses the trick despite having the country's biggest Superstar in his ranks.
AR Rahman's Music album is the major letdown of the film. The track 'Mona Mona Gasolina' best of the album. The background score is fine. Cinematography is top notch and several unexplored locations of Karnataka like Linganamakki dam in Shimoga district, Jog falls were shown in the film.
The film which is 174 minutes long tests your patience. Except for the privilege of watching Rajinikanth after more than 1500 days and some fine locales in which the film is shot, there is nothing exciting about Linga. But since it is a Rajinikanth film, we have a dialogue here from the same film, "Rajinikanth did not fail, He just postponed the success".
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