Puli was the original title of the film but was later changed to Komaram Puli, obviously to appease the 'T' agitators. Puli is an ideal police officer who has nothing on his mind but duty coupled with moral policing, he believes that the police needs to be policed first and instills a sense of discipline in his department. The trouble starts when Al Saleem a don parks his car in a no parking area and is fined by Puli, this hurts the don because it's just not the car that has been seized but his prestige too. In this course of interrogation, Puli gets to know that this don has a nexus with a dreaded terrorist Nixon who has sent a few men to the country through forged documents to create mayhem and commit a few murders. Now the aggrieved seek solace and Puli opens the case, and in the course of cracking the puzzled relationship between Nixon and Al Saleem, he gets to know a damning truth. Now what is it?
For a film being advertised as a hi-tech action thriller, Puli is over-the-top in spirit. It doesn't have an extraordinary story in the first place, and the makers aren't very subtle while narrating it. Unsubtle plus stupid - now that is shaky ground for a star to throw himself onto, 2 years after his last project.
Pawan Kalyan has put on some weight and grabs the opportunity to play the role of a police with panache. All his songs/dances are an absolute treat especially the number 'amma thale' and 'power star'. There are quite a few inspiring monologues that he reels off without even a slightest pause but you need to concentrate to follow it, he is so swift in his delivery, he suddenly breaks into a telangana dialect. His sincerity is visible and the role suits him to the hilt but if he continues to take three long years for every film, it will be the age that becomes visible. The action scenes and body language will make his fans go into frenzy and the romance between the debutante and him is silly but entertaining. The hero whose heart triggered a conflict in Kushi while gaping at women's midriff, makes him go weak, stammer, stutter and meow like a cat in one similar scene.
The hero is introduced to us in the form of his hapless and pregnant mom's puke. This is when an uneasy curiosity about what else this movie will bring to you sneaks up menacingly onto you. However, Pawan Kalyan's fans know that it's him in the womb, and start cheering.
So Komaram Puli (Pawan Kalyan) is this incredible award-winning super cop. He tells the government that if he's given a team and enough resources, he'll ensure that he will resolve every single police complaint made by citizens in every single lane in every single colony in every single city in every single state in every single country on every single planet. Alright, we admit we're exaggerating - he stopped at either "colony" or "city", we forget - but we're sure he did mean to zoom all the way up.
The film shows us a couple of examples of how amazing this team (the "Puli Team") is, and before you can savour some genuinely impressive and touching moments of Gandhigiri, it quickly moves on to the actual story. Al Saleem (Manoj Bajpai) is a don who wields power over the entire state - it's political leaders, even - and Puli runs into him when investigating the case of a police officer who went missing a couple of years ago.
Komaram Puli should have stuck to the Puli Team concept, at least to logically complete the fantasy. Pawan Kalyan delivering passionate dialogues of righteousness and duty is indeed absorbing and stirring, and this is what the film should have exclusively capitalized on.
Instead, it moves on to an ordinary plot of the hero trying to get even with the villain. All the slick gadgetry and quick-paced action slowly feels shallow because nothing impressive is happening to the story except for the dialogues. The violence doesn't dominate the script, but its intensity does.
Strangely, Al Saleem doesn't even seem all that evil to you, since he's not given a chance to be, thanks to how much the hero is all over the place. Al Saleem is painted as an absolutely eccentric character, one that is intended to be funny but that makes you feel sorry for Manoj Bajpai beyond a point.
Nikesha Patel oozes oomph, looks hot and attractive, she sizzles in her reasonably adequate role given to her. Manoj Bajpai impresses once again, the scenes between him and Pawan Kalyan are engaging, but the dialogue that steals your heart comes from Puli's mother Saranya while in a discussion with Nasser. About the film Komaram Puli, everything goes fine but towards the second half of the film the content flounders. It is from one villain to a non existing one and from a non existing one to three more people that the hero needs to bump off and the finale is abrupt. Leave the impossible intro and the disappointing finale and enjoy the middle, that is you will learn to enjoy the film if you identify with Puli's character and commentary than with SJ Surya's story telling technique. You walk away enjoying Pawan Kalyan's work but the film gives you a feeling that somewhere towards the end the director lost interest.
The romance is led by a nymphomaniacal heroine brought in from the '90s, but this one's not even pleasant. The woman (Nikesha Patel) is capable of stooping to the worst kinds of emotional blackmail to marry her man, and while she's not being sleazy, she's being so dumb she insults even the hero's intelligence.
Pawan Kalyan, like we said, is all over the place. That's not a bad thing to happen, but his all-consuming energy seems to serve no purpose beyond a point. His dialogues are lengthy and delivered at a frightening pace, and it does get monotonous.
For Manoj Bajpai, playing a caricature evidently isn't tough job. Ali has a tiny comic track. The heroine has some stunningly bad lip-sync going for her, even in the songs. Surprisingly, all throughout the songs, she looks about as disinterested as an extra.
Rahman's music has, in all probability, grown on you by now. However, the picturization and the choreography of the songs are dampeners when compared to the sheer variety in sound that the man delivers in a couple of them.
We're sure several have vowed to watch this flick regardless of how it may turn out to be, but if you aren't among them, there's not much reason to join the rushes for Puli.
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