Saw this movie this evening with better half.
Anant Nag as 66 year old Venkoba Rao is an Alzheimer's patient left at a Nursing Home (Nightingale!) by his very busy careerist son. Left unattended, he wanders away. The duty doctor Sahana (Sruthi Hariharan) has developed affection for this very interesting old man full of stories and memories of how he met and wooed his late wife Pushpa in the College library. He taught his son how to sketch and have fun. But now the young man is busy chasing his dreams and has no patience with his boring Alzheimer's liability of a father.
Son Shiva and Sahana search desperately here and there for the missing dad. But Venkoba Rao has managed meanwhile to get muddled up with a gang of hired murderers while they were trying to get rid of a BBMP engineer's body after murdering him on a highway.
The rest of the story is a bit long, as several threads have to come together rather slowly until Shiva and Sahana have developed a closeness through her sharing of all the stories she has heard from Venkoba Rao, with Shiva.
Finally all the baddies kill off each other. Venkoba has gone through everything without the least understanding their violent world. He is equally nonchalant when restored to his son. All ends happily for Shiva and Sahana. But not before one is rather bored by the meandering thugs story. Maybe the movie could have catered less to the whims of the producer who always wanted to make a murder mystery but landed up with a director keen on directing Anant Nag as an Alzheimer's patient.
Anant Nag has done brilliantly in his few parts. His humour and pitiful debility are portrayed memorably.
He tells the murderer at one point of the story, feeling pity for him as he is plotting his own escape. "They say there are two dogs in each of us. The black one, who stands for hate, violence, jealousy and revenge. The white dog stands for love, giving, peace and harmony. Who wins in their battle? Ha ha. It is simple. The one whom you give more biscuits!"
Sruthi is very good in her role. Rakshit Shetty as Siva has also done well. Sruthi's somewhat gaunt face needs getting used to, but she acts well. Best wishes to her!
And let me not forget the music. There are a few songs in Raghu Dixit style, pregnant with words of life philosophy sung to some strident guitar and drums. The songs are thrown in whenever the producer felt the movie's tempo was flagging. It seems to be a constant toss up between showing murderers or throwing in songs. Ok, that's a bit uncharitable. Anyways you get my drift I hope.
