Ragada

Ragada (“Friction”) is a 2010 Telugu action comedy directed by Veeru Potla and produced by D. Siva Prasad Reddy for Kamakshi Movies. Nagarjuna plays a money-minded man who plays two gangsters against each other, with Anushka Shetty, Priyamani and Dev Gill, and music by S. Thaman. Released on 24 December 2010, it was a commercial success, and was dubbed into Tamil as Vambu and into Hindi the following year.

What the story is about

Peddanna is the most feared gangster in Andhra Pradesh, with three henchmen who kill on his orders. Satya Reddy, who cares mostly about money, wades into a fight between Peddanna and a rival, GK, sides with GK and becomes his partner. GK’s girlfriend Sirisha falls for Satya, and so does Ashtalakshmi, a young woman from a Brahmin family whom he rescues from goons and who comes to stay with him. As Satya plots GK’s war with Peddanna, it becomes clear that he has his own reasons for being there, revealed in the second half’s twists.

Cast and crew

• Nagarjuna as Satya Reddy
• Anushka Shetty as Sirisha
• Priyamani as Ashtalakshmi
• Dev Gill as GK
• Pradeep Rawat as Peddanna
• Kota Srinivasa Rao as Gangaiah and Brahmanandam as “Brahmam Darling”
• Tanikella Bharani as Devudu and Dharmavarapu Subramanyam as Narayana

Director: Veeru Potla. Producer: D. Siva Prasad Reddy (Kamakshi Movies). Music: S. Thaman; the audio, on Aditya Music, was launched on 29 November 2010 at Shilpa Kala Vedika, Hyderabad. Runtime: 136 minutes.

Reviews

Reviews were mixed. Idlebrain gave it three out of five, praising Nagarjuna, Anushka’s make-up-free look, the second-half twists, the action and the technical work, but criticising the thin first-half story and the crowd of villains. Rediff (two and a half out of five) called it formulaic but “paisa vasool”, worth the money for Nagarjuna’s performance.

Box office

The film did well, but Wikipedia’s figures for it are uncited and do not agree with one another. Its introduction claims a gross of over ₹38 crore and a distributors’ share of ₹18.15 crore; its box-office section gives ₹8.48 crore in the opening week, ₹15.27 crore by the fourth week, a total share including overseas of ₹17.15 crore and a worldwide gross of ₹30 crore. We have not verified these figures against a primary trade report.

Where to watch Ragada

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

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