Waltair Veerayya movie review: Neither Chiranjeevi nor Ravi Teja can save this film from drowning in shallowness (2024)

Cut to the next scene, high-ranking Navy officials are seeking the whereabouts of Waltair Veerayya (Chiranjeevi). The country’s armed forces are in dire need of his help as the officers express the inability to use force at their disposal to save four Navy men who have been kidnapped by Bangladeshi smugglers. Reason: pouring rain and choppy waves.

The top Navy officer calls the head of the kidnappers and tells him that he has sent a force to stop him. The head of the kidnappers asks, “What force?” The officer retorts, “Mega force.” So Waltair Veerayya is a friend of the Navy. He is an influential figure among the criminals and a guardian angel for men in uniform.

No, we haven’t gained the full extent of Veerayya’s powers yet. Veerayya not only has superman-like sway over humans but has also tamed the oceans. “The father of Bay of Bengal,” says one of the kidnapped officers looking at Veerayya riding a tiny fishing boat braving the storm and raging waves. As if on cue, the waves rise to give Veerayya’s boat a distinct advantage against a big ship.

Thus Waltair Veerayya is presented to us as a man with superhuman capabilities. He’s not human. He’s god-like. The filmmakers don’t want the audience to respond to the character Waltair Veerayya, but they want us to venerate before the star playing Waltair Veerayya. And that kind of presentation causes a disconnection. When you present a hero, who can manipulate the forces of nature, you must also present a villain who can match his powers. Not Michael Caesar (Prakash Raj) and Solomon. These criminals pose no serious physical threat to a man who is called “the father of the Bay of Bengal”. And there is no emotional danger in the narrative for us to worry about the soul of Veerayya. It’s all just surface-level without any depth.

Director-writer K. S. Ravindra aka Bobby creates quite a hype for Waltair Veerayya in the opening minutes and fumbles to maintain the same tempo for the remainder of the narrative. The film falls victim to its own hype. To call the plot contrivances in Waltair Veerayya shocking is an understatement. Bobby takes the audience for granted as he assumes that they would pay little attention to the disingenuous cause-and-effect mechanism in the narrative as long as the film stays focused on the antics of Waltair Veerayya.

Veerayya butchers gang members of a drug cartel during a festival celebration at a popular temple in Malaysia. The devotees and those performing at the festival continue to do their thing as if they are celebrating the killings done by Veerayya. In the same scene, Veerayya spectacularly murders his enemy while sitting on an elephant. And that murder is televised across Malaysian channels but Veerayya faces no repercussions. As if nobody in the Malaysian government cares when a man brandishes deadly weapons and terrorises the public in their country.

And just before mounting the final assault against his enemy, Veerayya breaks into a duet number with his crush Athidhi (Shruti Haasan). What’s the thrill in breaking the tension after struggling to build it so much?

The emotional spine of Waltair Veerayya is the relationship between Veerayya and his young brother. But, even that suffers a serious beating when Veerayya’s kid brother asks him to murder their common enemy as part of vigilante justice. What well-meaning brother, who knows the ins and outs of India’s legal system, would ask that of his brother?

The confrontation scenes between Chiranjeevi’s Veerayya and Ravi Teja’s Vikram Sagar bring in much-needed comic relief. But, they are not enough to save a poorly written movie spruced up by good production value. Composer Devi Sri Prasad’s duets do more damage than good to the narrative.