Sa-Ro-Ja

Rating : 7/10
Release Date : September ‘08
Time : 154 minutes
Director & Writer : Venkat Prabhu; Music : Yuvan Shankar Raj
Starring : Prakash Raj, Jayaram, Kajal Agarwal, Premji Amaran, Shiva, SPB Charan, Vega Timothia, Nikita Thukral, Vaibhav Reddy, Sampath Raj

If you copy, please copy well. Sa-Ro-Ja is apparently a copy of Judgement Night or at least inspired by its premise but I don’t grudge it one second because its well made. Multiple storylines coming together, various twists and turns, deft editing, a tense / thriller atmosphere well maintained when the movie finally kicks off, some good action sequences, well sketched characters that you care for. But above all, large generous dollops of humour that keeps you entertained while you watch and never lets the film get too heavy.



Daughter of wealthy tycoon is kidnapped. Ransom call comes in and the cops are hindering a trade which the father is all too willing to make. Simultaneously four friends are going to Hyderabad, in their VW camper, to watch India play a cricket match. The four are quite a motley bunch, ranging from a popular TV serial actor who is a bit full of himself to a good for nothing who see’s angels coming around him whenever he witnesses any woman.

The stories intercut and soon, amongst the four, you begin to form an impression about the different personalities. You know who you are rooting for, who you feel you don’t like. And soon, in the case of the four, they literally take a wrong turn and are stuck in a world they wish they hadn’t entered.

The laughs though continue to come thick and fast. The four friends constantly fighting amongst themselves, the lyrics of the songs, the angels coming in (sometimes at inappropriate times) whenever a girl is seen. There is a very funny scene when, in a typical filmi scene, the ‘heroes’ are confronted by a hooligan and in a do or die kind of mode they yell out blood curdling yells, flex their muscles and charge at the hooligan. But what happens next is anything but filmi…


Venkat Prabhu made the endearing Chennai 28 (nice film on gully cricket) and he’s returned with the same gang here. Enjoyable songs. Some gore. Lots of ‘tension’. But very good fun. Despite watching via subtitles...