Bodyguard Movie Review by Chaitanya Kumar Vummethala

After a long gap of over an year, Venkatesh has come up with his choice (of remake) as Bodyguard. Released with a good hype and pre-release talk, lets see how is it competing with Mahesh Babu's Businessman which was released just one day before its release...

Story, Screenplay & Direction: Gopichand Malineni has tilted Siddique's original story-line a bit to match the nativity, which is still not so convincing to our audience. Though I did not watched the original  (Malayalam) version or that of Tamil, I got a chance to keenly observe Salman's Bodyguard (Hindi Version on Sunday) after watching Venky's (on Saturday) to draw the above conclusion. Having stated that there are slight changes in the story line, the key concept and the theme remains same which should help the movie becoming a commercial HIT.


When it comes to direction part, Gopichand never failed in portraying the story with the required standards, keeping veteran actor Venkatesh's image in view while meeting the expectations on such prestigious project from the actor (over an year gap) after his Nagavalli. 

Screenplay was cool but the pace of the movie was bit slow. Hero introduction scene was at its best, real treat to victory fans which is a power packed action episode, a total contrast to that of climax. Though most of the scenes have directly copied from the original, the captain of the project handled the senior actor very carefully making the required changes to the script but has failed to extract vital performance from Venkatesh. While the director tried to enhance the flavor in the movie with comedy and emotional episodes, the final outcome does not have an healthy comedy tracks in-spite of having senior comedians like Ali, Dharmavarapu & Venu Madhav on the casting. Overall the two movie young director, Gopichand Malineni has done a decent job with this flick!!

Dialogues: Kona Venkat made his mark and added value to the project. His "Prema ante bus journey laantidhi......Pelli ante flight laantidhi.....", dialogue has a good connection with the story and helped the audience in understanding the depth of the concept very well. Kona provided dialogues of all kinds to entertain audience of all classes (both sensible and mass dialogues). Unlike for most of the big budget movies Bodyguard has the scope for every actor to prove their dialogue delivery capabilities with the required emotion in it and Venkat did justice for such a responsible job.

Music: Thaman has scored good music for the Bodyguard audio with a couple of melodies and excelled with his background score (actually it was not my regular theatre so the sound system must be great there) felt like hearing to the best work by Thaman for the first time, at least in the first half of the movie. But gradually became pale when it reaches the climax, certainly missed the crucial part of his contribution. He must have lost his focus due to Businessman, never know if he was under pressure. A better BGM in the climax would have helped the movie elevating to the peak. These kind of movies generally requires excellent Back Ground Music, but Thaman has just reached 50% of such target.

Editing: Gowtham Raju, poor job - misplacement of songs and unfinished patches were irritated at places, I would say the proper editing would have helped the movie shaping up in a much better way. The experienced editor failed in keenly identifying the errors in the movie, pity.

Cinematography: Shyam K Naidu has done simply superb job, Venkatesh was seen like an young charming hero - never seen him like this before in the recent past (at least during the first half - matching with the story), Trisha and Saloni both were gorgeous on screen. The way he captured Trisha on every frame was a visual feast to all classes of audience, even female audience likes the way Trisha was captured due to the selection of costumes. Both the actresses were lucky enough to be shown as pretty beautiful and glamorous which would certainly help them in bagging another 3 to 4 new projects each, quickly this year. That way Mr. Naidu has helped in adding more colors to the project.

Art Department: AS Prakash, with the extended support by the producers of Bodyguard, leveraged this advantage and has done a pretty decent job in terms of building high standard sets, where ever required.

Action: Ram Lakshman duo should be highly appreciated for making an excellent introduction action episode followed by couple of fight sequences near temple and a climax fight with a 51 year old hero, excellent job by these brothers.

Production team: Bellamkonda Suresh & Bellamkonda Ganesh Babu, were pretty confident on scoring a super hit this Sankranti with Bodyguard, "Venkatesh-Trisha" being a Hit Pair. So they never compromised on spending money where ever necessary. Good production values can be observed in this movie.

Artists Performances:

Cast: Venkatesh, Trisha, Saloni, Prakash Raj, Subbaraju, Ali, Jaya Prakash Reddy, Venu Madhav, Dharmavarapu, Shravan, Adarsh Bala Krishna, Tanikella Bharani, Pragati etc.


When it comes to emotional performance, Venkatesh stands as No.1 and if the story line also slightly matches to his style - then you can imagine the lead actor's contribution. He did a decent job but the co-ordination was lacking between him and Ali. Trisha competed well with Venkatesh and delivered her best, even her looks were also stunning and was shown as pretty beautiful in this movie.  

Saloni, unlike any other regular supporting artist excelled all the way and proved once again that she is a better performer. Prakash Raj being a versatile artist, involved thoroughly into the character delivered a best performance. Pragathi was decent as Trisha's mother. Tanikella Bharani was utilized properly with his short role in the movie. Despite a talented actor, Subbaraju once again was wasted like it happened to him in Panjaa.


Of the four comedians - Ali, Jaya Prakash Reddy, Venu Madhav and Dharmavarapu; Dharmavarapu got a peculiar character but could not deliver his best to his role, on the other hand JPR has out performed in his limited role with his usual slang; Though Ali and Venu Madhav brings few smiles at places they have once again failed to entertain the audience to the fullest (not met their standards). All others were OK.

Overall Analysis: 

• "The best part of the movie was the hero introduction episode and the way it was captured - this part is the biggest highlights of the movie!" A regular mass audience will come up with the above statement after watching the movie. 
• "The movie has got the best feel and emotion", will be another statement from the family audience. 
• "It has nothing but a typical love story", says a college student.

But my say after watching the movie is that the selection of theme itself is a biggest challenge (after its recent hindi release) and the way Bodyguard team has come out with the final output is not so gripping and convincing but definitely entertaining leaving little confusion in telugu audience!! 


Drawbacks in the movie are unhealthy comedy track, too much of drama, extra songs, blind belief on the subject, weak BGM. Positives being, best performances by almost every actor & actress (specifically the young boy's performance), Music for songs is good, way of handling the sensitive story-line very carefully, Action episodes, Locations and Casting, Dialogues at places etc., dominated the negative points and cleared every possibility of scoring at least a Normal HIT! 


One time watchable - 3/5 is my rating for Venkatesh's Bodyguard.....