Bheema movie story: Ramanna (Achyuth Kumar), a local garage owner, commanded respect and fear, in equal measure, among people in the neighbourhood for trying to keep the area clean of trouble and troublemakers. All that comes crashing down when Dragon Manju (Dragon Manju), an apprentice that Ramanna treated like a son, starts dealing drugs out of the garage and even gets the latter’s son hooked on the substance. When Ramanna’s son dies of substance abuse, he finally kicks Manju out, and drowns his sorrow in alcohol.

Upon the insistence of a friend, Ramanna takes two youngsters under his wing, including Bheema. Years later, Manju, now a hardcore drug dealer and aspiring politician, continues to have simmering tensions with Bheema (Duniya Vijay) and the gang, with no major incident, until all hell breaks loose when there’s a personal tragedy for Bheema at the hand of the former.

Bheema movie review: Duniya Vijay was hell-bent on not revealing anything about the plot of his sophomore directorial Bheema, which now makes sense because he was operating with a wafer-thin plot, if one can call that. And this comes from a man who made a commendable start as a filmmaker with Salaga nearly 3 years ago, so there was a certain expectation that even within his comfort zone of gangsters and the crime world, he’d stitch together an engaging screenplay. Alas, that was not to be. Bheema, in all honesty, is painful to watch.

At its core, the ‘plot’ is the conflict between Bheema and Dragon Manju, but they don’t go fist to fist until the last 10 minutes or so. The rest of the movie is meant to be the build-up to this mega showdown. But then, repeated shots of Vijay riding across town on his Yamaha bike with his gang, youngsters doing drugs and partying, is not exactly the most engaging. Maasthi Uparahalli’s dialogues and Charan Raj’s music score have to do the heavy lifting of elevating the film, but the overdose of punchlines becomes tiresome after a point. The music is not bad, but is let down by the visuals unfolding onscreen.

Vijay introduces Girija as a no-nonsense police officer and gives her more action and blood to spill in the first half and then clips her wings in the second. She does justice to the role, even though much of it requires her to be rather foul-mouthed. Apparently, the mark of a confident woman with a don’t care attitude is that expletives flow like a waterfall. I had this peeve even with Sanjana Anand’s character in Salaga, and Vijay repeats it here both with Girija and to some extent with Ashwini, who is the romantic interest, as well.

The problem with Bheema is not only its outdated and wafer-thin plot. Vijay falters in the execution too. The film is lowbrow, but even such cinema can be captivating if treated right, including good performances. Unlike Salaga, in which Cockroach Sudhi’s character Savitri or Dhananjaya as ACP Samrat stood out, there’s none of that in Bheema, even though Vijay had Achyuth Kumar, Gopalkrishna Deshpande, Rangayana Raghu and Ramesh Indira at his disposal. I am tempted to say that it is a criminal waste of talent, but then the screenplay had to have some meat in it for these men to work with. There’s only so much they can do when the subject matter is so flimsy.

Bheema movie verdict: A very disappointing follow-up to Salaga, Bheema has been made for audiences who are okay with mindless action, dialogues and counter-dialogues, with some objectification of women thrown in, for good measure. Die-hard fans of the actor will probably queue up to see what he’s brought to the screen this time around and may even enjoy some parts of the film. Bheema is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. So, try it at your own risk.

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