Vijaya Rama Rau's Arjun Chakravarthy directed and produced by Vikrant Rudra is releasing on 29 Aug 2025. Arjun Chakravarthy's OTT rights are yet to be signed. Let us see how Arjun Chakravarthy, a biopic on real life Kabaddi player from Nalgonda, Nagulayya appealed to viewers.
Arjun Chakravarthy story revolves around young boy Arjun Chakravarthy's journey as a Kabaddi player. National Kabaddi Board Member Kulkarni (Ajay) lands from Delhi to a remote village in Telangana in search of Arjun Chakravarthy (Vijaya Rama Raju) and findsout the shocking happenings in his life.
What are the happenings in the life of Arjun Chakravarthy (Vijaya Rama Raju), who represented India at International Level bringing in glory and what role his uncle Rangaiah (Dayanand Reddy), Devika (Srija Rose), Sheshadri Sharma (Ajay Ghosh), his friend Ramana (Durgesh Lankapalli) played form the intersting part in his journey.
Vijaya Rama Raju did full justice to his role. He looked young and flamboyant showing his skills as a kabaddi player and also his fears while expressing his love. He showed love and affection towards his uncle and care towards his friend. He showed variations in his expressions and emotions and delivered dialogues with ease. He also flaunted his well chiseled body to make a powerful impact.
Harsh Roshan as young Arjun Chakravarthy made a powerful impact. He showed good body language and attitude at that age. Srija Rose got very limited screenpresence and she did justice to her role with her looks and expressions. Dayanand Reddy showcased his experience in the role of Arjun Chakravarthy's uncle and took emotions to the next level. Ajay, Durgesh Lankapalli and Ajay Ghosh performed according to their roles.
Arjun Chakravarthy story is penned by Vikrant Rudra. He drew inspiration from a real life story of a Kabaddi player from Nalgonda district. It is based on the real life story of Kabaddi player Nagulayya, who is hailed as Arjun by his close aides and who represented India in the 1980s. Everyone knows that any sports drama treads on a predictable trope like success, pain, struggle, and glory. It all boils down to how it is portrayed on the screen.
He starts the narration in an interesting manner and then goes into the story of Arjun Chakravarthy's rise to fame and the struggles he underwent during his journey and how he dealt with him. While the entire first half is spent on his rise to stardom and bringing laurels to the nation with his achievements and his personal life and then the twist during the interval, the second half deals with the treatment he got from the government officials and the trauma he faces and how he overcomes them, bringing a culmination to the story.
The first half generates interest with good screenplay and intense narration showing what propelled him to take the sport of Kabaddi, his short and sweet love and also his childhood flashback, and the coincidence of his expression of love and national championships. Though there are few predictable elements that slowed the pace of the narration, director handled it in a commendable manner and ensured that there are no much drags, setting the stage for the secondhalf.
In the second half, the Kabaddi game takes a backseat and many things happen in personal and professional life of Arjun Chakravarthy. The director elevated them taking the emotions to the next level. The Kabaddi game scenes are filmed quite well and in an impactful manner. However there are few over the top scenes and dramatic and unbelievable scenes in the game. There are also few repetitive scenes that diluted the intensity and the interest levels.
Right from the start, till the finish the narration assumed a serious tone and the lack of entertainment elements puts off few viewers. But director should be praised for believing in the subject and not deviating from the main point. Director Vikrant Rudra's story is emotional and the screenplay is uni-dimensional and he did a good job as the director.
The songs tuned by Vignesh Baskaran are situational and are in line with the story. While one song highlighted his struggle to glory, the other song highlighted his pain due to the circumstances. Jagadeesh Cheekati, with his cinematography, showed the scenes in a natural and realistic way. He showed the rural and rustic atmosphere in an attractive and captivating manner. He also created an impact with the scenes shot in the Kashmir locations. The editing of Pradeep Nandan is quite good. Though the emotional scenes in the second half give a dragged feel. Dialogues are hard-hitting, realistic, and powerful. Production values are quite good.
Altogether, Arjun Chakravarthy turns out to be a powerful emotional sports biopic. Vijaya Rama Raju came up with terrific performance and director Vikrant Rudra showed confidence in his story and proceeded ahead and bankrolled on it. He should be praised for his confidence. He did justice to the story with his script, screenplay and direction. However, predictable elements that cannot be undone in the biopic, lack of entertaining and very less romantic elements and repetitive scenes impacted the intensity levels. But the way, he highlighted the emotions of a player and the way the country in general, especially goverment officials illtreats them is highlighted, speaks volumes of his conviction. A little finetuning of the script, few interesting twists and youthful elements and more tighter screenplay would have added value to the narration. Considering all these aspects, Cinejosh goes with a 2.5 rating for Arjun Chakravarthy.