Lakshmi Bomb

Story: Lakshmi is a tough and honest sessions court judge, and gets murdered by goons because of her crackdown on a notorious human trafficking cartel. How Lakshmi’s death is avenged forms the crux of the story.

Review: The movie is a two-hour celebration of women’s empowerment. The narrative in the movie tackles issues like dependency (on man), gender bias, sex trafficking and violence against women. And despite the endearing vision, the message is rather muddied as the film goes on. Lakshmi (Lakshmi Manchu) fights her way against deep-rooted connections between crime and bureaucracy, and finally indicts a dangerous criminal Vaikuntam (Prabhakar) after he was caught trafficking women. Her strong-willed actions cause a back clash to ensue and she is murdered by other members of Vaikuntam’s gang. But for some weird reason Lakshmi continues to live with her parents (Posani Krishna Murali and Hema) and becomes a ghost whenever she pleases, killing members of the gang one by one.

The first half of the movie is rather confusing and has numerous flashbacks and repetitive scenes, that one can’t even figure out what’s happening. The script lacks any coherence with what the screenplay. And one is left figuring how Lakshmi’s parents continue to live with Lakshmi despite them cremating her at the beginning of the first half. The movie also has needless side stories with two guests at Lakshmi’s house proving to be an assault on the senses with their over-the-top comedy. The scenes where the two guests hide under bed sheets in their room are downright mediocre and childish. The acting too is rather ordinary with only Lakshmi Manchu adding a few ounces of credibility to the screenplay. Krishna Murali and Hema’s robotic dialogues start to get irritating after a while.

The second half begins with Lakshmi’s parents realising that Lakshmi’s body has been occupied by the ghost of her twin sister Priya who had died during birth. And what follows is a major flashback of Lakshmi’s life right from her birth. Priya’s ghost accompanies Lakshmi wherever she goes and just before Lakshmi gets cremated, Priya occupies Lakshmi’s body and come to life. This cause Lakshmi’s parents to think that she’s come back to life, and is a major deviation from how the first half’s script played out. The rest of the film is how Priya’s spirit eliminates the entire gang including Vaikuntam.

There are just too many illogical twists and turns in the movie for the audience to make sense of anything. And it would be a surprise if audiences actually sat through the entire film. The music by Sunil Kashyap is decent and the editing is pedestrian. You might as well go for you regular evening walk instead of watching this movie.