‘Agent Sai Srinivasa Athreya’…A tad overstuffed, but still a damn good thriller.

There are fans who love a genre and then there are fans who live it. Seenu (a fantastic Naveen Polishetty), who prefers to be called Agent, belongs to the latter. A small-time detective, but a big-time fan of the mystery genre in all its forms — books, movies, characters, Seenu survives on trivial cases of missing milk packets and small thefts at the temple until he can get his hands on a big, juicy case to solve. When he does — after a breezy, amusing half-hour— its a long, perplexing ride. With one twist after another, Agent Sai Srinivasa Athreya, keeps you glued to the edge of your seats. Is it a murder? Or a human trafficking case, or something related to the drug mafia? What exactly is the nature of the case, and who is the victim? — the plotline keeps changing its course steadily, yet keeping us engaged throughout.

Due to this, Agent Sai Srinivasa Athreya packs in a lot of issues — the police and healthcare system, corruption, religion, blind superstitions — and even though it all ties up neatly towards the end, it becomes a lot to take in, in a short amount of time. But, this, of course, doesn’t invalidate the originality and freshness this movie brings to the Telugu cinema. It tells us that a good thriller doesn’t require costly budgets, foreign locations, high octane action scenes, (*ahem* Saaho *ahem*) to make our hearts race. Seenu and his team discuss their strategies, theories at a tea stall, they follow their suspects on foot, on buses, share autos. The show doesn’t glamourise the setting too — Nellore, a geographical location that lends credibility to the whys of the crimes being committed and isn’t just an excuse to set a Telugu film outside Hyderabad. But the best aspect would be the comedy, which comes not at the cost of others, but from the leading man himself. I loved the bits with the salesman impersonation, and the one scene in the hospital with Seenu, Bobby (Suhas) and the nurse, had me in splits. His characterization helps keep the subject matter from becoming too morbid. Whether it’s his office, located at the vegetable market, or the empty Starbucks cup he carries around, you can see the thought and effort gone into creating him.