Avane Srimannarayana is a Kannada fantasy adventure film directed and edited by Sachin Ravi. It has Rakshit Shetty playing the male lead, who also co-wrote the film, while Shanvi Srivastava plays the female lead. It is produced by HK Prakash and Pushkaran Mallikarjunaiah under the banners Pushkar films and Paramvah Studios. The Original Kananda version got released first on December 27th, 2019, whereas the Tamil dubbed version has released a week later on January 3rd, 2020.
Rakshit Shetty plays the role of Narayanan, a grey-shaded police inspector who is in search of a 15-year old treasure. Two other gangs headed by Jayaraman and Tukarram are also in pursuit of the same treasure. How he manages to get hold of the prized possession, and the dynamics involved in the adventure forms the rest of the story.
Rakshit Shetty is in terrific form, both as an actor and a writer. In fact, the latter has helped him understand the intricacies of Narayanan and handle the role with maturity. Narayana is not your usual cop who goes behind baddies. He is quirky, funny and his chemistry with Achyutanna (played by a fantastic Achyuth Kumar) is a delight to watch. Narayana's introduction, in particular, is one of the most unique ones in Indian cinema.
Another place where the film gets things right is the production design. The story is set in a fictional town called Amaravati, and there is great attention to detail. The costumes, props and the art direction supports the writing well and creates a sense of realism. You get a feel of existing along with the characters in Amaravati.
The film starts on a slow pace with a lot of dialogues but once our hero enters, you lose track of time. The plot has a lot of twists and turns in the first half, but they are relatively less in number for majority of the second half. Since ASN runs for close to 3 hours, a little more effort could have been put in to make those portions engaging.
On the technical side, the film has been shot well and Ajaneesh Loknath's background score is splendid. It elevated the film during its slower portions but the same cannot be said about the songs. They come across as a speed breaker and the lack of popularity of these songs in Tamil doesn't help its cause.
All this being said, Avane Srimannarayana is an important film for the Kannada film industry. It achieves something closer to what KGF did in 2018 and deserves to be celebrated.