A jerky gangster drama

Oscar Wilde's truncated quote 'Nothing succeeds like excess' seems to be fitting snugly for describing Sudheer Varma's latest offering 'Ranarangam'.

Coming into circulation after his not-so-impressive 'Kirrak Party' (2018), Varma decides to spread it thick – be it the whizzing bullets, falling bodies, blood and gore and above all, a deafening BGM unleashed by music director Prashant Pillai.

The setting is spread over two decades and more and over multi-locations too like Visakhapatnam for the retro part of the story and Spain, where the hero, a fearsome don now is shown domiciled.

This is also the justification for the helmsman to lock in the presence of two heroines – Kalyani Priyadarshan and Kajal Agarwal, who seems to be sizzling non-stop, giving tough competition to the later entrants who are lesser than her age by at least 10-12 years.

Liberally interspersing the colour effect and mood of Hollywood bang bang dramas, the film takes off normally when Sharwanand, a hulk of a character, graduates from being a cinema ticket black marketeer to a bootlegger.

Here is where he comes into direct conflict with the local MLA who runs the spirit business without a competition.

Inspired by Marlon Brando and his slurry style of speaking in the eternal classic 'The Godfather', Murali Sharma puts up a very good performance as the menacing law maker who takes on the hero and his friends ruthlessly.

A real estate deal which could benefit the political mafia is dangled before the hero, who rejects it as it involves displacing thousands in Visakhapatnam.

However, the bad guys are in no mood to give up and the 138- minute film stays fixed in this milieu and ends with a feel good note, once all of them are shown their places.

Using a past and present card time and again, the film keeps back and forth giving commensurate footage to both the heroines and connecting the story line alongside.

It gets to be tedious watch after a point in time, with the viewer wishing that the flashbacks stop once and for all. Kalyani makes a notable impact with her soft and assertive demeanour while Kajol is content being the prop, who walks into the sunset with the hero as the end titles roll out.

What could have been an average-plus film peters out into a mindless mayhem of violence and revenge as it ends, owing to the pedestrian ending that is handed out to the viewers.