Telugu Film Industry has been blessed with good content makers from time to time. Every generation does have a good actor with great run at the box office content wise and commercially, too. In current generation, Sree Vishnu has been concentrating on good content and delivering some really memorable films. After his much adored Raja Raja Chora, the actor has joined hands with the film's director, Hasith Goli, for another film, Swag. The combination is back working for same production house, People Media Factory, owned by TG Vishwa Prasad. Swag also marks as Meera Jasmine's comeback film in Telugu and it released on 4th October, worldwide. Let's discuss about it in detail. 

Plot: 
In 1551, a matriarch Vinjamara Rukhmini Devi(Ritu Varma) treats men as slaves and asks them to wear face masks and doesn't let them any kind of freedom of any sorts. She wants to give birth to only female babies but previously, her male babies died early. Many royal staff believe that she killed the male babies as she harbours fierce hatred towards males. Her husband, Swaganika Bhavabhuti(Sree Vishnu) wants to establish patriarchal society, where men have all the freedom and women have restrictions. Cut to 2024, we see SI Bhavabhuti(Sree Vishnu) being retired and his head, SP Dhana Lakshmi decides to withhold his pension and other benefits. Rather than trying to sort out differences with her, he rebels and decides to live without benefits. 

He doesn't want to bow down to a woman in any case. At this juncture, he receives a letter stating that he belongs to royal family Swaganika lineage and he has a huge amount of treasure waiting to be claimed. He tracks down the "Royal Family lineage" recorder Vamsa Vruksha Nilayam and decides to register himself as Yayathi(Sree Vishnu)'s son and only surviving "male kin" to the lineage. But he is asked to submit a proof of lineage but it happens to be with Anubhuti(Ritu Varma). Meanwhile, Bhavabhuti is completely in love and longing for his estranged wife, Revathi(Meera Jasmine) and their kid. His son, Singa aka Singa(Sree Vishnu) desperately tries to become an influencer. Will Bhavabhuti meet his son? What would Anubhuti do with the "Swaganika identity proof"? Is there any other successor to the royal family? Watch the movie to know more. 

Analysis :

Sree Vishnu is one of the finest performers and he did his best in the four distinctive characters. His looks and body language for different characters are unique and differentiable. In the transgender character, his look and performance needs to be praised. But as Bhavabhuti, he did go a little overboard at places and the writing also did not help him at places. He did his best in Yayathi role by being true to the character and time period. Ritu Varma has a good character and she did perform well. Meera Jasmine has the meatiest role and she did her best. Saranya Pradeep, Daksha Nagarkar characters don't really connect with us but they did well. All others performed aptly to their characters. 

Writing wise Hasith Goli looked highly ambitious for the subject he had in his mind. He tried to include how matriarchal society gave rise to patriarchal society in a satiric way. It is true that some Indian kingdoms were identified to be matriarchal. In Mahabharata, Queen Prameela was said to be the head of matriarchal kingdom and Arjuna married her, after falling in love with her. Among Telugu dynasties, Satavahana dynasty is known for being matrilineal, where Kings assume their mother's name rather than father's name. Taking these sort of examples, Hasith Goli wanted to create a gender war between male and female. He tried to give an origin to the entire central clash in the film but then he did not establish the transgender not being inclusive in gender classification. 

When the story deals with acceptance of humans as humans without any gender bias, the focus needed to be more about that core than just identifying the kith and kin of a royal family. As a premise, it does provide great number of possibilities to explore but the screenplay that Hasith Goli went for did not really convey the point in an exciting and engaging way. The talented director did not identify a core emotion and it almost looked like he is searching for it throughout. In actuality, he did knew the core emotion, essential beats but in trying to expand the simple point, he traveled too many places in trying to bring everything he wants to say in one story. 

There are moments of brilliance here and there with director bringing out inner turmoil of Meera Jasmine's character. The delicate touch he has added to Vibhuthi character in Flashback episodes is also good. But then, he fails to integrate all the emotions, characters and their motivations in a streamlined manner. There are lot of good things hidden amongst some weird and very strange things. All those could have been simplified, structured and presented without going for shock value. With good score from Vivek Sagar, fine visuals from Vedaraman Shakaran and good production values by People Media Factory, film still ends up being a messy effort with lofty ideals. 

TeluguOne Perspective :

Sree Vishnu does try his best and there are few sparks here and there. But the film finds it hard to connect with us as too many characters and back stories fail in hooking us to core emotions.

- Naresh Kota