Businessman

Surya comes to Mumbai with one aim: to take over the underworld. He apprentices to nobody, asks nobody's permission, and works his way up by learning how the city actually functions. Against him are the police, the politicians and the established gangs. Puri Jagannadh writes and directs. Mahesh Babu plays Surya and Kajal Aggarwal plays Chitra. What separates it is that its hero offers no excuse. In Indian cinema the character who enters the criminal world has usually been wronged and is taking revenge. There is none of that here. Surya wants power from the first scene and says so. Puri Jagannadh makes that choice deliberately and never feels the need to defend him. Which is why there was an argument on release. It was written that the film legitimises crime and makes violence attractive, and some of the dialogue caused problems with the censor board. It was a large commercial success in Telugu cinema and is treated as one of the turning points in Mahesh Babu's career. The most cited thing about it is the dialogue writing. Puri Jagannadh's short, hard, repeatable lines became a template with this film. Who it is for: viewers who like Telugu action and star centred narrative. Who it is not for: the female character is thinly written and the romance never fits, and anyone looking for a moral accounting will not find one.