NOTA Movie Review

October 5, 2018

2 minutes read

Review Overview

Performances

Story & Narration

Technical Aspects & Music

A competent political drama!

Vijay Deverakonda's NOTA comes off as a decent fare. One does feel that the film could have explored more areas with such a good concept in hand, but at the same time, its a fairly engaging, watchable film on governance.

Cast: Vijay deverakonda, Sathyaraj, Nasser, Mehreene Pirzada, M.S. Bhaskar, Priyadarshi, Sanchana Natrajan & others

Cinematography: Santhana Krishnan Ravichandran

Music: Sam CS

Editing: Raymond Derrick Crasta

Art Direction: Drk Kiran, SS Moorthy

Stunts: Anbarivu

Screenplay by: Anand Shankar & Shan Karuppusamy

Story & Direction: Anand Shankar

Produced by: KE Gnanavel Raja’s Studio Green

Release Date: 05-010-2018

Run Time: 02:26:00

After making action thrillers with both Vikram Prabhu and Vikram, Anand Shankar arrives with a political drama in NOTA. The film is entirely built on a dialogue-driven narrative, giving way to different situations and narrating its story on the same line. Here, Anand Shankar collaborates with writer Shan Karuppusamy to convert the novel ‘Vettatam’ into the format of a film.

And to do so, he makes use of some terrific actors in Vijay Deverakonda, Sathyaraj, Nasser and MS Bhaskar. Vijay Deverakonda is a fine fit to the role, and performs his part with a handful of expressions. It’s a different outing for him, in contrast to the roles he has done so far in Telugu. On the other hand, Sathyaraj comes forward with a jolly act in his trademark style which actually helps in maintaining a lighter mood in many scenes. Nasser and MS Bhaskar are apt to the role they play, and there is Sanchana Natarajan who makes a good impact in her first outing.

NOTA’s main issues lie in the deviations it takes from its main plot, with the surrounding sub-plots not coming the full circle. This unevenness in the screenplay affects the flow of the film with respect to the connect it has to organize with its characters. However, Anand Shankar’s high-level treatment of the script helps the film work as a drama on the whole, with the references to the real-life events making it worthwhile.

Cinematography by Santhana Krishnan is adequate. Sam CS once again brings a strong score to the table, and though his songs don’t work too well, the film is bent on his amazing background score that ups the ante easily.

NOTA comes off as a decent fare. One does feel that the film could have explored more areas with such a good concept in hand, but at the same time, its a fairly engaging, watchable film on governance.