‘Khiladi’ movie review: Ravi Teja plays to the gallery

The story lacks logic, tests patience but cannot be written off completely

The hero in Khiladi is touted to be a smart player. For most of the film, we do not understand what he is after, though we see clues that he has a soft spot for hard cash. In the first part of the story, Mohan Gandhi (Ravi Teja) is presented as a happy family man. We see a farcical romance that leads to his marriage but just before the interval, the members of his family are murdered. He is seriously injured but taken to jail, and his daughter is put in a welfare home.

Puja (Meenakshi Chaudhury) is a criminal psychologist; while helping a friend in a thesis, she gets to know about Mohan Gandhi and vows to bring him out of captivity and unite the father and daughter. In the process, she gets to know that her father, who is a cop, is unscrupulous and chides her for aiding his release. There is a backstory as well of Raja Shekar (Rao Ramesh) who brings up the orphan Mohan Gandhi; he is trapped in a money laundering case by the home minister (Mukesh Rishi) and his son. This aspect becomes a catalyst in Mohan Gandhi’s journey to usurp a vast amount of currency belonging to the home minister’s son.

There are innumerable characters, all played by big names. The film production appears slick and expensive as if to justify the story about money laundering. So there are foreign locales, high-end cars, guns, rifles and the works... But does the narration and an aging Ravi Teja complement each other?