Ajay Bhupathi-Karthikeya Gummakonda-Payal Rajput’s RX 100

I’m going to call this post ‘the shock effect’.

The response to RX100 in Telugu speaking states having been startling. So when I got an opportunity to watch the film with subtitles, I couldn’t resist. I walked in with no other idea about the film. It kicks off slowly. We see an extremely angry hero, who just wants to smash up things to vent his anger. We don’t know why he is angry, but I predicted it’s love. After all, the tagline says ‘an incredible love story’. But we get some bloody action and an introduction of a father figure interestingly named Daddy. Nothing really new.

It’s a tedious watch until we get to the flashback and the film took me by surprise. Reason — we get a heroine who is vocal about her likes and dislikes. I was floored when she unabashedly checks out the hero and his six-pack abs. She drives a Jeep, a RX 100, doesn’t shrug it off when someone questions her sleeveless kurta (though interestingly dressed predominantly in sleeved kurtas after). She makes the first move and also the physical advances, resulting in a steamy relationship. I was a bit hopeful. Are we finally admitting, on-screen, that women have sexual desires as well?

Maybe I was a bit too hopeful. The heroine turns out to be a villain who ‘uses’ the hero for lust. It seems like the director has revisioned the quintessential villain, just with a different gender. It is good that he went all the way (she also smokes and inculcates the habit in the hero). Now, I think women can make great villains. But after misleading the viewer for about 70% of the film, the twist comes as a shock, placed there for precisely that reason, to shock the viewer. And here I was actually thinking we are getting a new-age heroine.

And from there, the movie condescends into a series of normal sessions of ‘you have no morals’. I positively died a bit when the hero (earlier ready to happily die for the heroine) ‘lets’ the heroine (Or, should I call her villi?) live, as she she would living due to his ‘mercy’ and then dies. Sure, for a woman who wanted him dead anyway, this would hurt.

Serves me right for expecting too much.