Mirapakay

Mirapakay (transl. “Chilli”) is a 2011 Telugu action comedy directed by Harish Shankar and produced by Ramesh Puppala under Yellow Flowers. Ravi Teja plays an intelligence officer who goes undercover as a college lecturer, with Richa Gangopadhyay, Deeksha Seth, Prakash Raj and Kota Srinivasa Rao. Released for Sankranti on 13 January 2011, it was a commercial success.

What the story is about

Rishi, nicknamed Mirapakay, is an Intelligence Bureau officer. His chief, Murthy, assigns him to catch Shankar, the agent of a crime boss named Kittu who is planning to expand his operations across the country. Rishi tracks Shankar to Hyderabad and goes undercover as a lecturer at a college, where he falls for a student, Vinamra. Then Murthy tells him that Kittu’s daughter, Vaishali, studies at the same college, and that she is his best route to her father. Juggling the two women and the mission is where the fun lies; we will leave the rest to the film.

Cast and crew

• Ravi Teja as Rishikesha “Rishi”, alias Mirapakay
• Richa Gangopadhyay as Vinamra
• Deeksha Seth as Vaishali
• Prakash Raj as Kittu, Vaishali’s father
• Kota Srinivasa Rao as Shankar
• Nagababu as Narayana Murthy
• Sunil as Charukesha
• Ali as Al Pacino
• Chandra Mohan as Vinamra’s father
• Rao Ramesh as the college principal
• Brahmaji as Ram Gupta

Director: Harish Shankar. Producer: Ramesh Puppala. Music: S. Thaman. Cinematography: C. Ram Prasad. Editing: Gautham Raju. Runtime: 160 minutes.

Making of the film

After Shock disappointed at the box office, Harish Shankar struggled for work. As he told Idlebrain, he first narrated this script, then called Romantic Rishi, to Pawan Kalyan, who agreed after hearing the interval episode, but the project fell through. It was Ravi Teja, who had promised during Shock to work with him again whatever its fate, who called and asked for a story. Richa Gangopadhyay told Rediff that the director spotted her at the success party for Leader and first offered her the other heroine’s role, before deciding she suited Vinamra, a traditional Brahmin girl. Thaman’s soundtrack was launched at the Taj Deccan in Hyderabad on 5 December 2010.

Reviews and box office

Critics saw it as a Ravi Teja mass entertainer. Sify wrote that “despite a banal storyline, the film has entertainment value, punch and a decent presentation”. Idlebrain noted that Ravi Teja’s films “have scant respect for story and screenplay” and depend on entertainment, and Telugu Cinema called it time-pass if you are not tired of seeing him repeat himself. It did well commercially: the trade site T2BLive credits it with a distributors’ share of ₹17 crore. It was dubbed into Hindi as Khallas and into Tamil as Murattu Singam.

Where to watch Mirapakay

We do not have a confirmed streaming listing for Mirapakay on file. If we verify one with a platform, it will appear on this page.

Sources: the Wikipedia article on Mirapakay and the reviews and reports it cites, linked above; our own cast and crew records.