How many times have all of us seen this happen (Both in real life and in movies)? Boy falls in love with girl. Does not waste a second in revealing his feelings. Girl, after days/weeks/months of pampering, finally makes up her mind, about to say yes, when something colossal happens (caste issue or guy has bad habits or her parents oppose it or hero’s brother is a rowdy or whatever the story writer can come up with) and she has to abandon him and does so without has much as a 15 day notice period. she has covered her tracks well enough, to make it almost impossible for the hero to trace her back. The movie starts at this point, setting Abiram on journey, which is the Savari in the title.

All kannada movies are love stories, so is this one. However, there are more elements of a road movie here with the romance details taking the back seat. As the journey starts, he is quickly joined by Gaali Seena (who always introduces himself as Seena, Gaali Seena ), and soon they form this dynamic duo, going through the same set of events, which each of them reflecting on it differently. There is Abiram, son a multi-crore industrialist and then there is Seena, who is on the other end of the money spectrum and is actually a bike thief. As the Savari continues, Abiram reflects on his love story and how it crashed, and the farther his search for Janaki continues, the more he gets to know about life. He sees how life start’s, the difficulties common man faces through the life, and the end of it as well, all in a span of a week or so. I guess, it is pretty much what Janaki wanted from him, and as expected, accepts him at the end. Woman Power!!!

I watch a lot of Kannada movies, and can usually find 10s of flaws. In this one, though, the director is really smart and to some extent genre savvy. He keeps the movie length short (it runs at less than 2 ½ hours) and tight editing to the point that there is not a single irrelevant scene. For example, at one point, there is a confrontation between Abiram and a local goon. Any other director would have setup a rather long 10 minute fight sequence with 15 goons being bashed up by the hero with all the destructible parts in the location (vessels made of mud, glass bottles, road side tea stall, plastic chairs) destroyed. Here this whole fight scene is wrapped up in 30 second, once the point is driven home. I liked that. There is a item song, again, the bomb shell lady wear’s something believable and it is written into the story in a smart way, rather than seeming like a add-on. Of course, it is still there for your viewing pleasure.

Director dude, has focused more on getting the scenes tight and on the editing to worry about the acting, so not much of a emotion display by the hero and heroine, though the guy playing gaali seena is good enough. The songs are dead on, probably as dead on as Milana. Still, if only the same movie could have been made without the love story background, now that would have been a real achievement.

3 out of 4.