Thoughts on Check - A Yeleti Infused Shawshank Redemption

Check – Yeleti Infused Shawshank Redemption 

With Check being released on SunNXT and JioCinema this weekend, I have made it a point to "check" it out, mainly because I missed it in theatre. This article is written as an opinion piece on the movie which resulted from my curiosity of why it was not appreciated during its theatrical release.  Surprisingly this time, even the critics didn’t like a Yeletic.

Chandra Sekhar Yeleti and his team, made a constant point throughout the pre-release interviews that the masses are going to like it. Though they didn’t say it deliberately, the discussion of Yeleti finally having a commercial success always came up in the publicity. It looked like this time, he has made the movie for the crowd ( and not the critics alone ). Sukumar was also partially held at the same position before he made Rangasthalam (2018), as his films were only becoming the content for #underrated and #aheadofitstime tags by insta meme-makers and serious moviegoers like me. 

But Check is not Rangasthalam and Yeleti is not Sukumar.

Their mutual interest only lies in making smart films. Sukumar writes Smart + Soap Operatic Drama (at least that’s what he does at the core for Arya, Arya-2, 100% Love, Rangasthalam). Yeletics are Smart + Thrilling (also Slice of Life) films that are heavy on concepts. The concepts, mentioned here is the line distinguishing Sukumar from Yeleti. Sukumar’s concepts make regular Soap Operas Smarter, whereas Yeleti’s concepts become a Smart Thriller. Yeletics and Sukumar’s films are also shouldered by the most gimmicky and magical Screenplay in Telugu Cinema (best from both being Anukokunda Oka Roju and 1Nenokkadine respectively). 

Also Read: Thoughts on Vakeel Saab 

So what if, Yeleti didn’t make a film keeping the crowd in mind (also not critics), but paid a tribute to the films which made him the brilliant Screenwriter he is today – We get a movie titled Check. Check has Yeleti infused ShawshankRedemption and his intentions neither tamper the classic nor completely incline towards The Great Escape. His avid followers know that Yeletics are always empowered by that Single Thread, which when it comes down to, sums up the entire film in the snappiest manner. For Check, it is – “An innocent White Collar Con Artist, trapped and convicted as a terrorist on death sentence, fights for his justice”. 

This being a similar Plotline to Shawshank…, Yeleti adds to the picture, Realm to Reality of Chess. The heavy metaphors of Christianity being swapped with the competitive and foresighted spirit of the mind-game. The equation is - Shawshank Redemption is a movie heavily influenced by Christianity and Check is a movie heavily influenced by Shawshank Redemption. To elaborate, if it would’ve been Mysskin paying a tribute – the Christian Allegory would be the bull’s eye with each character Indianized and amplified to mythical proportions– never losing out on the depth of the original. Yeleti, in contrast, takes the plot as Getaway and rewrites the story with Chess Allegory. 

The explanation is perfect, the 4 sides of the Chess piece resemble the four walls of the Jail where the war is waged between Adithya ( the White Con Artist played by Nithin) and the opposition. The Jail in resemblance to the opposition in Chess Analogy is Black. This war is not a chess game of Equal teams, it’s one White soldier versus the entire Black Kingdom. The prime opposition characters resemble the Rook, the Bishop, the Knight. The Law becomes the King and the Lawyers become the Queen. Time personifies as the soldier. The game ( or war ) starts with only Adithya, but with time, we have One queen (Rakul Preet Singh) and 1 soldier (Sathyanarayana) added to the Whites. The abstract element of Trickery becomes the Rook, the Bishop and the Knight, which Adithya earns with perseverance and time. 

This way the entire movie is set for an unconventional and interesting game of chess and Yeleti makes this clear time and again with scenes, so rich and smart, that only he could imagine writing of. The entire film is filled with references and racy screenplay. Yeleti gets the conflict, world-building and drama right in the first half. The flashback portions detach the flow for 15-20 mins as it deals with a lighter and less referenced timeline (the song and dance, romance etc. maybe was the space where Yeleti thought of experimenting for appeal, keeping the masses in mind). 

Also, just like the maker’s previous thriller films – you never get an interval bang, you get an Interval episode. Meaning, the best thrill for him is not in the Pledge of turning something ordinary, out of the blue into something extraordinary – the plot twist. Now the audience is looking for the secret. But they won't find it because of course, they’re not looking. They don't want to work it out. They want to be fooled.

Also Read : Revisiting Cinema of '10s - Perception of Filmmaking

The best of the thrill for him is in moving the act of ordinary to extraordinary and most importantly the Protagonist finding his way back to ordinary by the end. Wait. aren't these line about the idea of bringing back the Ordinary from Extraordinary said by Cutter, while he explains the 3 acts of magic in The Prestige, which, again is a brilliant film in terms of Screenwriting. Also, the Protagonist in Check likes to call himself a Master of Choorakala (advanced level of real-time magic, which Aamir Khan blithely attempts in Dhoom 3). The entire second half and the climactic act is about deception. Does this mean, Yeleti has paid tribute to The Prestige also? Can the story of Check also be explained with a theory based on 3 acts of Magic – as explained in the original?

There are also mentions of other movies like TheGood, The Bad and The Ugly and The Great Escape. There might also be an entire list of movies that were hinted at and riddled their way into the screen, we might not know. While other directors pay tribute to one movie, one facet, one hero or one genre at a time, Yeleti’s screenwriting travels across many films of different levels of complexity, all at a time and yet he never manages but comfortably champions in creating a story that can stand on its own legs of Direction, Scriptwriting and Dialogues. Discussing Check from the lens of films other than Shawshank… is an article of Synccinema for another day, but shall we please take a moment to recognize and understand the man’s brilliance in creating one creatively affluent Telugu thriller after another.