Alluri - A matter of honor

Alluri 

2022, Telugu

Director Pradeep Karma

Stars Sri Vishnu, Raju Ravindra, Ravi Varma, Kayadu Lohar, Suman

Mohan's Measure ⭐⭐

Yet this inconstancy is such. As thou too shalt adore;

I could not love thee, Dear, so much,   

  Loved I not Honour more. ~ Richard Lovelace

The inconstancy of Tollywood is in telling a good story. It is once again presented in a movie that I actually would have liked,  if not for the ridiculous ending. 

Just what is it about Indian Cinema  that makes it believe every hero has some sort of unfulfilled death wish? If it's some angry maniac out for revenge, he is bloodied but alive at the end of the movie, enough to marry the leading lady. But, you actually present a story about a man who serves a higher molarity, and you have to find some possible way to have him martyred. Perhaps,  it is a society's unconscious belief that to be moral means to be weak or naive. 

I would have liked to have I liked Alluri. Its philosophical conversations and male code of honor is, no doubt, idealistic. But, it is certainly refreshing to see in a Telugu action film. 

Sri Vishnu is somewhat convincing in the first half playing a cop with an otherworldly sense of bringing good to the common man at the expense of the bad guys. Particularly impressive is a gory fight scene, in which a dying woman is given an opportunity to kill the men who raped her. There is something so viscerally primal in these moments of sheer violence that it successfully achieves what I feel the Director had in mind, to make men shudder at the power of the Sacred Feminine. 

But it is not the Goddess one focuses on in the second half, as we suddenly find ourselves among those who wage war in the name of a male one.  This of course leads to the usual one man army maneuvers that leads to the hero's demise. 

But, is self sacrifice really the mark of a hero? Could not those who offer good to the world do so without losing sight of love and family any less? Perhaps Tollywood will one day wake up to a more sober understanding, ''heroes are just good men, doing the best they have with what they've  got.''