KV Raju - Director, Dialogue Writer of a different breed.

KV Raju, can be labelled as belonging to a totally "different" breed of directors. Mainly famous for "slightly" raw presentation at times, some good action movies, sometimes a little violent, couple of emotional movies but definitely had "very very different techniques" of dialogues.

Towards late 90s, he was kinda criticized for overdoing the dialogue parts.. (recently gotta watch his rashtrageethe (a fairly new movie) but of course that had "the one and only" saikumar... so we may spare that one )

Have liked several movies by KV Raju

To begin with some late 80s - early 90s movies:
Originals:
1) Indrajith
2) Kadana
Both had our very own REBEL STAR Ambi and a good supporting role by Devaraj, and #1 had "Seetha" and #2 had "Draupadi" as heroines

3) Bandhamuktha (Tiger Prabhi, Bharathi and devaraj ... the best scene of the movie - When Tiger smashes Devu, in the "baTTe etti etti ogeyO" manner was too violent for its time !!
Mr. Raju remade this movie in Hindi (Forgot the name of the movie), featuring Amitabh Bacchan. Also, KV Raju is probably the ONLY Kannada director to have directed Amitabh Bacchan (No, I dont consider Amrutadhaare and Mr.NC ) .

Remakes: (but nicely done ones !)

1) Yuddha kaanDa - I had never seen Meri Jung, even if I had, I am sure this would make me forget Meri Jung (for same reasons why Ranadheera was better than Hero ). Punching dialogues mouthed by srinivasa prabhu (for ravichandran) and devaraj (uh ho.. he has to be in every KV Raju movie. ) Had exceptional work by Hamsalekha on the music/songs/BGM area, and great dances by Shashikumar (who was supposedly asked to tone down a bit by the "hero" of the movie)

2) beLLi mODagaLU :
A good attempt and good work by entire starcast/crew, be it ramesh in his small role, jayanthi as the mother, lilting music by Upendrakumar, one of the good roles of her career by SriDurga (ie Malasri). But it was Doddanna, who got the role of his lifetime ! and he did an excellent job at it.
Also, it was KV Raju who remade this movie in Hindi as "Udaar ki zindagi" featuring Kajol (one of her first few movies) and Jeetendra.

To be continued..
More on "Raju" in subsequent posts when I write about his mid 90s works - some of his best movies in his career, but failures at Box office.

Have already posted this on our KA Forum.
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