Prakash Raj Archives – CULTURE MIX

September 26, 2025

by Carla Hay

Pawan Kalyan in “They Call Him OG” (Photo courtesy of Prathyangira Cinemas)

Directed by Sujeeth

Telugu and Marathi with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in India and briefly in Japan, in 1993 (with flashbacks to 1970), the action film “They Call Him OG” features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A vigilante, who trained as a samurai fighter when he was a boy, get caught up in a rivalry between his mentor/father figure and a gang leader.

Culture Audience: “They Call Him OG” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and action movies that are loud and flashy but ultimately have dull storytelling.

Emraan Hashmi in “They Call Him OG” (Photo courtesy of Prathyangira Cinemas)

“They Call Him OG” is just another mindless action flick with a derivative plot about crime, revenge and family turmoil. This tedious movie clumsily mishandles its cross-cultural storyline about an Indian vigilante who trained at a Japanese samurai dojo. There are absolutely no surprises in “They Call Him OG,” which has hammy acting, cringeworthy dialogue and hollow characters.

Written and directed by Sujeeth, “They Call Him OG” has a “vigilante versus criminals” story that’s been done so many times before in action films. “They Call Him OG” has rushed and jumbled introductory scenes that take place in 1970, in Japan’s capital city of Tokyo. A samurai dojo is invaded by yakuza gangsters, who kill all the students, except for one, who manages to escape on a ship to Bombay.

This student is an orphaned Indian boy who’s about 6 to 7 years old. His name is Ojas Gambheera (also known as OG), who is later given the samurai name Master Orochi Genshin. On the ship with OG are two businessmen from Bombay: Satyanarayana Roy Nandan also known as Satya Dada (played by Prakash Raj) and Vardhaman Mirajkar (played by Tej Sapru), who each goes down very different paths in life.

OG saves the lives of Satya Dada and Vardhaman when OG kills a group of invading pirates who wanted to steal the gold that was on the ship. Satya Dada is so grateful to OG for saving his life, Satya Dada becomes a father figure to OG and raises OG alongside Satya Dada’s two biological sons.

The movie then fast-forwards to 1993 in Bombay. OG (played by Pawan Kalyan) is a vigilante protector for Bombay Port, where Satya Dada get many of the shipments needed for Satya Dada’s business. OG’s sidekicks include Satya Dada’s biological sons. Venkat has the role of Satya Dada’s elder biological son. Shaam has the role of Satya Dada’s younger biological son.

Vardhaman also has two sons, but they have become gangsters who want to take over Satya Dada’s business and cause terror among the locals. Vardhaman’s elder son Omkar Vardhaman Mirajkar, also known as Omi Bhau (played by Emraan Hashmi). Vardhaman’s younger son is Jimmy Vardhaman (played by Sudev Nair).

Somewhere along the way, OG met and fell in love with a medical doctor named Kanmani (played by Priyanka Mohan), and they have a daughter named Taara, who’s about 5 or 6 years old in most of her scenes. When someone in Satya Dada’s family dies, a man named Arjun (played by Arjun Das) attends the funeral, and a family secret is revealed, which leads to Arjun also being involved in taking over the family business.

“They Call Him OG” then proceeds with the predictable slew of gun shootouts, fist fights and explosions. There’s some samurai swordplay, but it’s awkwardly dropped into the movie. Taara gets kidnapped and is held hostage. OG is a stereotypical scowling “hero” who has a soft spot for his family. The end of the movie announces a sequel, but because so much of “They Call Him OG” is forgettable and senseless, a sequel is likely to be more of the same junk.

Prathyangira Cinemas released “They Call Him OG” in U.S. cinemas on September 25, 2025, the same day the movie was released in India.

April 23, 2023

by Carla Hay

Dev Mohan and Samantha Ruth Prabhu in “Shaakauntalam” (Photo courtesy of AA Films)

“Shaakuntalam”

Directed by Gunasekhar

Telugu with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in India, the fantasy film “Shaakuntalam” (based on Kalidasa’s ancient play “Shakuntala”) features an all-Indian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy royalty.

Culture Clash: A king and his wife are driven apart by a curse and might or might not get back together after the curse is lifted.

Culture Audience: “Shaakuntalam” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of “Shakuntala” and tacky movie versions of classic fairy tales.

Mohan Babu in “Shaakauntalam” (Photo courtesy of AA Films)

The best thing that can be said about the bloated fantasy drama “Shaakuntalam” is that the costumes are eye-catching. Everything thing else is terrible, including the acting and fake-looking visual effects. It’s too much money spent on hackneyed filmmaking. With a total running time of 142 minutes, and with scene after scene filled with mind-numbingly stupid dialogue, “Shaakuntalam” will quickly induce boredom and/or irritation with viewers who know this could have been a much better movie with the right filmmakers.

Written and directed by Gunasekhar, “Shaakuntalam” is based on the ancient Indian play “Shakuntala,” written by Kaludasa. It has all the elements of old fairy tales (usually written by men) that are told in many other cultures. In these stories, dashing royal men meet, fall in love, and court beautiful women whom the royal men want to marry.

The women in these stories tend to be too good to be true: always kind, always patient, and always with the implication that their royal suitor is the “first, only, and greatest love” of the woman who’s being courted. We all know that these stories have inevitable “happily ever after” endings. But the journey to get there—and how it’s presented—determines if a fairy tale is a classic or not.

“Shaakuntalam” looks like a movie where the filmmakers cared more about cramming in as many phony-looking, obviously computer-generated animals in scenes, rather than in crafting a good story. This entire movie could have been 80 minutes or less, but it’s dragged out to 142 minutes of repetitive and moronic scenes. The original songs in the movie’s musical numbers have incredibly basic and soulless lyrics that could have been generated from any old computer program.

The maiden-turned-queen in “Shaakuntalam” is Shakuntala (played by Samantha Ruth Prabhu), who was abandoned as a baby. The movie’s opening scene shows baby Shakuntala being found in a forest and adopted by a kind of loving guru named Kanva Maharishi (played by Sachin Khedekar), who raises her along with several of his young male disciples. Kanva, who names the baby Shakuntala, is so wise, he already knows who are the parents of this abandoned baby is the daughter.

Shakuntala grows up to be a young women who has never met her parents: mother Menaka (played by Madhoo) and father Vishwamitra, who died before Shakuntala could meet him. Through a series of circumstances, Menaka ends up back in Shakuntala’s life and becomes a domineering force in trying to control Shakuntala. Menaka only seems to care about what Shakuntala can get out of Shakuntala’s relationship with a wealthy king.

Meanwhile, Shakuntala meets the powerful king Dushyanta (played by Dev Mohan), who charms and seduces her. There’s a very over-the-top scene of Dushyanta being a one-man army in fighting of a group of rampaging tigers who invade Shakuntala’s village. This fight scene is one of many in “Shaakuntalam” that look like scenes from a video game. It isn’t long before Shakuntala and Dushyanta get married, and she becomes pregnant.

Shakuntala has two best friends named Anasuya (played by Ananya Nagalla) and Sarangi (played by Prakash Raj), whose personalities are indistinguishable from each other. The purpose of Anasuya and Sarangi in the movie is to hang around and be like a “Greek chorus” for Shakuntala. Anasuya and Sarangi are supportive pals to Dushyanta, but these two sidekicks also spread gossip and misinformation.

One day, a pregnant Shakuntala meets a guru named Durvasa Maharishi (played by Mohan Babu), who is the guru of anger. Durvasa asks Shakuntala some questions that he thinks she doesn’t want to answer. In reality, Shakuntala has tuned out Durvasa’s attempts to start a conversation with her because she is lost in her thoughts about the impending arrival of her baby.

Durvasa thinks Shakuntala is being arrogant and disrespectful to him, so he curses her by saying that her husband will forget all about her. And sure enough, the next time that Shakuntala sees Dushyanta in the palace court, with several of the king’s court members in attendance, Dushyanta says that he doesn’t know who Shakuntala is, even though she insists that they are married and are expecting their first child together.

Dushyanta thinks that Shakuntala is pregnant with another man’s child and is trying to fool him into making this child his heir. Dushyanta publicly humiliates Shakuntala and banishes her from his kingdom. The curse, which caused temporary amnesia, is eventually lifted. Dushyanta is heartbroken to find out that Shakuntala has disappeared because of his own cruelty. He then goes on a mission to find her.

The rest of “Shaakuntalam” plays out exactly like you think it will. However, it’s done in such a lumbering and long-winded away, you could fall asleep or do other things in the middle of the film and you really won’t miss anything substantial. “Shaakuntalam” is an unfortunate example of filmmakers thinking that a movie with a “barely there” plot will somehow be better if the movie is more than two hours long. That lengthy time just shows up the movie’s flaws even more and makes it more obvious that watching this dreadful dud is a waste of time.

AA Films released “Shaakuntalam” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on April 17, 2023.

Tag: Prakash Raj

Review: ‘They Call Him OG,’ starring Pawan Kalyan, Emraan Hashmi, Priyanka Mohan, Arjun Das, Sriya Reddy and Prakash Raj

Review: ‘Shaakauntalam,’ starring Samantha Ruth Prabhu and Dev Mohan