Lenin packs enough intriguing twists to hook you, but eventually buries them beneath an all-too-familiar revenge saga, reflects Sreeju Sudhakaran.
Key Points
- Akhil Akkineni delivers a confident performance in Lenin, backed by an engaging first half rich with Mahabharata symbolism.
- The screenplay keeps viewers invested with surprising character reveals before collapsing into a conventional revenge drama weighed down by excessive twists.
- Despite strong supporting performances and an impressive festival backdrop, Lenin ultimately squanders its intriguing ideas with a clichéd climax.
I wonder what this fad in Telugu cinema is about naming protagonists after famous Communist leaders and then placing them in films where they uphold rituals their namesakes would have staunchly opposed.
A few months ago, there was Pawan Kalyan’s Ustaad Bhagat Singh. And now there is Lenin, starring Akhil Akkineni in the lead.
Interestingly, in both cases, the protagonists are orphans adopted by kind benefactors. But while Ustaad Bhagat Singh at least has a flimsy reason for naming its hero so, there is no visible explanation why the hero of Lenin is called that. Possibly because the name sounds so cool.
Lenin, written and directed by Murali Kishor Abburu, is a revenge drama that is both fascinating and frustrating. There are plot developments and character turns that make the film pretty riveting until it overdoes the twists before settling into the usual vengeance drama.
The Narrative and Mahabharata Parallels
The film begins with a tale from the Mahabharata about Draupadi that becomes the legacy behind Bharatam Mittham, an annual festival celebrated in a village in Chittoor.
Cut to 2001. Lenin (Akhil Akkineni) has been released from prison and is out to settle an old score. The reason for his imprisonment has to do with the 1991 edition of the festival, which ended in a bloodbath.
The rest of the film is about what happened during that festival and how it is connected to his forbidden romance with the beautiful Bharathi (Bhagyashri Borse).
The first half sees Murali Kishor Abburu using the festival and its festivities as the backdrop to introduce the key characters and the simmering tensions between them. Every character has their own subplot, like Satirajulu (Sivaji), the illegitimate half-brother of Vasanth’s father, who is hated by Jayanthi and Vasanth but looked upon as an uncle by Lenin. Or Damodaram (Brahmaji), the ‘Shakuni’ of the village, forever looking for opportunities to stir trouble.
The Mahabharata parallels loom large throughout the narrative. When he is released from prison, Lenin declares he is going to end the Kurukshetra yudham. So there is the added intrigue of figuring out which Mahabharata character he represents. His faithful dog companion evokes Yudhishthira, yet Lenin is also an orphan raised as an equal by a prince, making him resemble Karna. So it is left to the viewer to figure out who the other Mahabharata counterparts in the village are.
Plot Twists
Except for the flash-forward portions, the main narrative unfolds entirely during the festival, which is meant to last 18 days but gets extended after a ritual goes wrong. Initially, it feels like a smart idea, as the setting lends the film a vibrant aesthetic (elegantly captured by Leon Britto’s frames) while becoming a character in itself, with every event naturally triggering another.
But in trying to stick to this self-imposed rule, the director crams far too much into those few days for it to feel believable. There is a meet-cute, love-at-first-sight romance, political rivalry, an elopement, a wedding gone wrong, an attempted murder, another marriage, and much more before everything descends into violence and betrayal.
On paper, Abburu has created a fascinating ensemble filled with revelations that keep the film engaging, especially in the first half. The reveal of a certain important character’s true nature, and the lengths they are willing to go to preserve their family’s honour, genuinely raises the stakes.
So even when the romantic songs act as speed breakers (Thaman S’ music and score remain a major plus for the film’s appeal), the twists keep you invested in what comes next and how it all leads to Lenin’s imprisonment.
An Underwhelming Second Half
The pre-interval stretch revolving around a wedding and its aftermath, followed by the interval twist, significantly raises the intrigue factor. The problem is that while the film establishes that many characters are not what they initially appear to be, it never convincingly explains how they reached that point or what it intends to do with those revelations.
Take Satirajulu, for instance. He is among the most compelling characters in the first half, thanks to his repeated humiliations and desperate longing to earn respect under his family name. However, once a major twist involving another crucial character is revealed in the second half, Satirajulu becomes almost inconsequential.
That twist unveils the film’s true villain. Without spoiling who it is, it is easier to predict that reveal is coming since Lenin has already established that almost everyone in this village, except perhaps the hero, is hiding something. The heavy Mahabharata influence also makes it easier to narrow down the possibilities. Here’s a clue: believe Lenin is Karna.
Once that reveal arrives, the screenplay hurriedly attempts to retrofit earlier events in light of this new perspective, and it feels as though everything is scrambling to justify itself. In the process, some of the richer character arcs established earlier are undercut.
That is still forgivable. What hurts more is that Lenin then begins to stumble badly while setting up its revenge track. The movie slips into familiar territory, with the villain embarking on a hackneyed ego trip that strips away much of what made the character interesting, leaving only the strength of the performance intact.
The final day of the temple festival, where everything falls apart, also carries shades of the temple fight sequence from Pushpa 2, though this one is much darker and considerably more melodramatic.
The movie also relies too heavily on villains explaining their motivations to conveniently placed characters solely so that the audience stays informed. The way these exposition dumps are handled feels like lazy writing.
Not content with the earlier twists, Lenin throws in another major reveal during the finale, where the bigger surprise is the hero taking on every wrongdoer in his life all by himself. The fight choreography is decent enough, but it never feels convincing. While the final twist has that obligatory ‘gotcha’ factor, it hardly improves the climax, only stretching an already bloated film by a few more minutes.
The Performances
Performance-wise, Akhil Akkineni is quite solid in this rare rural role, looking equally comfortable in the romantic moments and the heavier dramatic scenes. Though the character has shades of a mass hero, the screenplay wisely keeps those instincts restrained, apart from the action sequences. Thankfully, despite having a group of friends around him, the film avoids adding an unnecessary comedy track.
Bhagyashri Borse is also good as the spirited Bharathi. Strange as it sounds to say this about a female lead written in 2026, it is refreshing to see Bharathi given some agency. There are moments where she has the upper hand, and in one scene she questions her family for excluding her from decisions about her own life.
That said, there is still little to celebrate, since the film eventually places her in peril so that the hero can rescue her. By the second half, she is largely reduced to being the dutiful lover and the catalyst for the hero’s tragic journey. Not to mention, the movie continues Telugu cinema’s obsession with a woman’s waistline, albeit not as sleazily as what Peddi did with Janhvi Kapoor.
Easwari Rao gets a very interesting turn in the first half, but afterwards has little left to do. Pramod Panju is quite good as her son and Lenin’s best friend Vasanth. Among the supporting cast, Sivaji and Brahmaji make the strongest impressions.
In the end, Lenin has enough strong moments to hold your attention but doesn’t do a good enough job of building on them or taking them somewhere more satisfying. Instead, it eventually settles into the kind of violent, blood-soaked revenge saga Telugu cinema has served us many times before.
PS: While Lenin does a respectable job recreating its period setting, I was curious about one thing. Were pagers really being used in a village in 1991?
