Nandi award winner Mohan Krishna Indraganti never fails in impressing the audience with his exquisite presentation. His films entertain a wide range of viewers. His style of directing a film mesmerises the family audience. His previous works like Ashta Chamma, Mayabazar, Grahanam left a mark in the audience’s hearts. His direction skills are unique and he found a way to add neat drama to thin storylines.
One can say that Golconda High School is an underrated film as it doesn’t get the appreciation it deserves. Setting aside the commercial elements, GHS has perfect technical aspects. Be it casting, actors’ performances, storyline, presentation, everything is too-good, yet it isn’t appreciated enough.
Kireet Das (Subbaraju), a member of Board of Trustees of Golconda High School plans to convert the Schools’ cricket ground to a coaching centre. But this proposal is opposed by Principal Vishwanath (Tanikella Bharani). Kireet challenges Vishwanath to give a reason to hold his proposal. They agree upon a condition that if the school wins the State level cricket tournament, the ground will remain with them or it will be converted into a coaching centre. Then enters Sampath (Sumanth) trying his best to form a team of eleven students and coach them to win the tournament. Will he be able to form a team, will he succeed in saving the school ground from being destroyed sums up the rest of the story.
Golconda High School is a novel adaptation of a book The Men Within, written by Harimohan Paruvu making little additions. Some succeed in making good adoptions and some fail. Mohan Krishna is one of the few people who succeeded in carving a good film out of a novel. Adding a few commercial elements needed for a film, Mohan Krishna made the film beautiful. He didn’t entirely commercialise the novel, but only the right amount. And this right amount of commercialising the novel made the film wonderful.
Mohan Krishna did not go very deep with scenes or storylines. Every student or a member of the GHS team has a backstory revealing their characters, but do not dig so deep. And few scenes between Sampath and the students depict the audience of their relationship. The student’s Vs teacher’s cricket game scenes or the scenes where Sampath helps Mickey are very subtle and do not bore the audience. If there is one thing that sticks the audience to their seats, it is the right amount of emotions added to the film.
The love track between Anjali (Swathi) and Sampath is just fine and the rivalry story between Kireet and Sampath is also very convincing. To be specific, there were the right amount of cuts to the entire novel. The training scenes or coaching scenes are not shown which is a thing to appreciate the director for not lagging the film.
The entire casting of the film justified their performances. Sumanth as Sampath did a fine job, expressing concern for the students and the school cricket team. At times, he portrayed romantic expressions when needed for the love track and at times he displayed his concerning attitude with his students. He pulled off Sampath’s role with ease. Swathi, as usual, looked pretty as an English teacher and delivered a neat character to the audience yet once again. Tanikella Bharani, Subbaraju, Shafi pulled good performances out of their roles.
Though some bits were predictable like the ordinary Telugu films, Mohan Krishna covered up this with his exquisite presentation of an elusive content.
