Cast: Prabhas, Shraddha Kapoor, Jackie Shroff, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Mandira Bedi, Chunky Pandey, Mahesh Manjrekar, Arun Vijay and Murali Sharma

Director: Sujeeth

Rating: **1/2

The attempt was to make the biggest action film in India, to make a film that no one could till date. But Director Sujeeth just lost his sight and what he probably envisioned, in reality, did not meet expectations on reel life.

Coming straight to the plot, Saaho stars in a fictional city of 'Waaji' where a leader of a powerful syndicate of criminals Roy (Jackie Shroff) is killed in an accident in India after which his empire is on the verge of falling apart without a heir to the throne and soon starts the plotting to grab the throne and a fortune of gold left by him and the black box required to open the vault where this gold worth lakhs of crores is lying.

An internal mutiny begins for the throne by Devaraj (Chunky Pandey) whose plans are disturbed by Roy's son Vishwank (Arun Vijay) who is back to take what's his.

Then the hero of the film Prabhas makes a grand entrance on screen somewhere in the streets of Mumbai shining as a carefree cop Ashok who falls for a crime branch officer Amrita Nair (Shraddha Kapoor) just by looking at her picture. He is assigned a task to to crack a big robbery case worth 2000 crores and that lands him between the mayhem caused by the gold that Roy left behind and he takes down an entire army of criminals on his own.

Ashok and Amrita fall in love while working together on this case and without a convincing love story and after a few romantic songs Amrita drmatically puts a ring in Prabhas's hand which looks abrupt and very off-putting.


The story diverts from its path within 20 minutes of reel time and the plot is convoluted by many subplots and twists, introducing more characters on screen and adding to the confusion of the viewer who is left thinking that who is who and who is working with whom messing up the entire screenplay.

Saaho takes a turn before the interval by introducing us to a major twist in the tale and you feel that now the film will put a 5th gear but then the film just falls flat, the plot becomes predictable and the lack of a good screenplay and teamwork of the director and the writer just fail to impress.

The film makes you wonder what is happening, why is it happening and where is the film trying to head. At a point Saaho becomes more like the hindi word 'Saho' (to bear) and the 2 hour 51 minute long screen time adds to the viewer's plight.

Prabhas is the only thing on screen that is appealing, he has the charm and swag of a larger than life hero who is carrying the whole film on his broad shoulders. Remove Prabhas and Saaho will sink. He manages to convince us that he is real with his command over the intriguing character which is full of suspense but the script doesn't comply with him.

Jackie Shroff as always who has an an amazing screen presence looks elegant and classy as the criminal lord 'Roy' though he has a very short role but succeeds in leaving his mark,so full marks for him.


Shraddha Kapoor as the serious and cold natured cop Amrita Nair tries hard but fails in leaving an impact as a result rather than a tough crime branch cop she looks more like a confused cop who has no idea of what's going on around her most of the time.

Murli Sharma plays David the police cyber expert and Vennela Kishore as constable Goswami tries to create laughter on screen. Neil Nitin Mukesh also plays an important role but not much can be revealed about his character owing to a major plot twist.

Among the numerous villains of the film, only Chunky Pandey stands out and steals the show as the evil and psychotic villain Devraj. The rest of the villains are just caricatures and fail to make an impact. Mahesh Manjrekar does not have much meatiness in his role as Devraj's aide Prince.

Arun Vijay looks classy as Roy's son Vishvank and Lal and Mandira Bedi as Vishwank's dedicated allies Ibrahim and Kalki have done a fair job.

Prakash Belavadi's job as commissioner Shinde is only to give some orders and getting death threats by Devraj (Chunky Pandey) with whom he is working secretly.


Touted as the biggest action film of India, Saaho does deliver an action-packed adventure with a lot of adrenaline-pumping scenes specially the climax but lacks a good storyline and screenplay to support it. Still, the action scenes in the film are praiseworthy but also over the top at many places.

The VFX which is supposedly the second biggest star of the film after Prabhas lacks the refinement which should be there in the film like Saaho which relies heavily on VFX despite the budget of the film is a whopping 350 crore.

The fact is that Saaho is Sujeeth's second film as a director and it feels that he may have felt the burden due to a mammoth budget or may be he was just starstruck by having superstar Prabhas at his disposal. It has to be one of the two because it clearly is visible on screen looking at the half-hearted attempt made by the director and his team.

A few songs could have been avoided looking at the runtime of the film as they don't very much fit the storyline except 'Baby Won't You Tell Me' which is a good one, shot well and the locations are picturesque too.

All said and done, despite all this Prabhas starrer Saaho can still be watched for some good performances by Prabhas, Jacky, Chunky Pandey and the adrenaline pumping action that the film offers along with it.