The sudden death of a loving father brings a socio-economic crisis in a wealthy family leading to lot more trouble because of unforeseen happenings. Viraj Anand, S/o Satyamurthy takes charge of the situation and finally resolves all of it in the climax. After the lot more funnier Julayi, hit-maker Trivikram and 'Stylish star' Allu Arjun team up once again for a family-drama with equal doses of romance, comedy and action. SOS is a story of three men. One follows the heart; the other uses the brain and the last uses his brawn.
Trivikram is that director who wants to change the face of Telugu cinema but has recently taken the comfortable route of making mass-entertainers with his signature elements of extremely creative dialogues and strong emotional connect. This time, the story of a level-headed son trying to bring back the lost glory of his dad is taken as the premise. Post the bumper hit 'Race Gurram', Allu dons a role with not much of a fuss, shouting at the top of his voice while fighting and reciting pages of dialogues looking into the camera. This is one of his mature performances, thanks to Trivikram's character sketch.
SOS is not that regular template you come across, but definitely has all the ingredients to appeal to audiences of all classes and masses. Be it the situations where the story is first established and then the characters being introduced, Trivikram has trusted his screenplay, his cast and DSP's music as the USP to pull off a simple story quite engagingly. When a bad lead for a song can ruin the flow of a narration, Trivikram's understanding about the viewer's attention span has made the film a success. Though being an age-old, well-known, tried and tested formula to make an all-center film, it is the performances and back to back packaging of the sentiments-comedies in the scene progression, that make SOS grab all the attention and not deviate from the story.
Samantha comes almost throughout the film and also her looks and comical timing comprehend each other. She couldn't have asked for a better film. Her presence is even felt in an action sequence and she does tickle the funny bone in the first half of the film. During instances in the story when things get a little predictable, Trivikram brings another character to pilot the film. With three heroines playing the eye-candy, Adah Sharma gets to be the innocent, Samantha is funny and Nithya Menen is petite. It was surprising to see all the roles being given equal prominence and nothing or nobody was unnecessary.
It is Rajendra Prasad's characterization coinciding with the core story and lots of appealing situational comedy that gets the going interesting. Rajendra Prasad’s expertise as an actor does add so much value to the film. Trivikram once again proves that he is the indomitable 'Matala Mantrikudu' especially with the similes in the dialogues to explain an emotion. Kannada star Upendra plays a local goonda and the jumps with the dubbing; especially in the Tamil dialogues are pretty obvious. He looks muscled and massive. Sneha is his wife and she does play that home-maker who is nice to everybody. Without a concrete villain, SOS still manages to tell us the painful journey of the hero. Thanks to the powerful and meaningful dialogues in the voice-over, SOS becomes a charming drama.
Ali and Brahmanandam giving their share of funny moments, SOS doesn't become a strain to follow. Allu Arjun is almost the best dancer in the country and all his movements are always jaw-dropping, particularly the different types of moon-walks he manages to do. Even the songs had some pleasing scenes fused in to save some time on the story and not take another minute to go into the story. SOS gets better when some minute nuances in the story outsmart a situation, and ends on a high.
This is not that Telugu movie that you can troll for its stunts, but has some novelty included here and there with Parkour running in the first half and an encounter in a controlled environment in the latter. Special mentions for the production value in the backdrops and the climax song. DSP's typical BGM and reasonable songs reduce the friction in the story. Edits in the songs and the fights were above-average. Prasad's camera work was fresh and real. Another winner for the Trivikram- Allu Arjun combo.
