Lenin Movie Review: ★★★½☆ (3.5/5)
Lenin is an ambitious rural Telugu drama where Akhil Akkineni delivers his most grounded and convincing performance to date, shedding his urban star image for a dusty village setting with real conviction. The film is rich in mythology, twists, and visual craft but struggles to emotionally connect because of underdeveloped relationships and a screenplay that prioritizes shock over substance.
Rating: ★★★½☆ (3.5/5)
Director: Murali Kishor Abburu
Release: July 10, 2026
Language: Telugu
Cast: Akhil Akkineni, Bhagyashri Borse, Sivaji, Easwari Rao, Pramod Panju, Ramki
Runtime: 159 mins
There is a version of Lenin that could have been genuinely great. The ingredients are all there — a mythology-layered village setting, a hero reinventing himself, a mystery that slowly unpeels, and enough twists to keep a theatre engaged for nearly three hours. The problem is that having the right ingredients and knowing how to combine them are two entirely different things.
Set in Srirampuram, a fictional village with deep ties to the Mahabharata through its annual Draupadi festival, the film follows Lenin, an orphan raised by the village headwoman Jayanthi alongside her biological son Vasanth. Lenin grows up loyal, grounded, and quietly in love with Bharathi, the daughter of the village elder. Around them swirl rival politicians, power-hungry outsiders, and figures with agendas that begin to surface one by one as the story progresses.
Akhil Akkineni deserves genuine credit here. This is the most committed he has been on screen. He has physically transformed for the role — tanned, slightly bulked up, sporting a beard — and adopted the Chittoor dialect convincingly enough for most of the runtime. More importantly, he brings an emotional sincerity to Lenin that his earlier performances did not quite reach. When the film works, it works largely because of him.
Bhagyashri Borse as Bharathi is warm, assertive, and brings a natural presence that complements Akhil without disappearing behind him. Sivaji in a key supporting role, delivers intensity with real conviction and has the film’s single best-written scene — a declaration about upholding righteousness even when righteousness itself has lost its way. Easwari Rao and Pramod Panju both contribute meaningfully to the ensemble.
The first half is where the film tests your patience most. It moves slowly, leans on familiar tropes, and fills time with songs when it should be building character relationships. The interval twist, however, is well-executed and arrives with genuine impact, briefly making you believe the second half will pull everything together.
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It does not quite manage that.
The second half piles on reveals and character transformations that feel engineered for surprise rather than earned through storytelling. Relationships that should carry emotional weight — particularly Lenin’s bond with Vasanth, which is meant to be the film’s emotional backbone — never receive enough screen time to develop convincingly. When the emotional moments arrive, the groundwork is not there to make them land.
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This is the film’s central weakness. Characters are introduced with complexity and then flattened into convenient directions. Twists that should devastate instead feel mechanical. The climax is visually grand but emotionally hollow.
Leon Britto’s cinematography is consistently beautiful — the village landscapes and festival sequences have a texture and authenticity that give the world real life. Thaman’s background score works overtime in key moments, elevating scenes that the screenplay has not fully supported.
Lenin is a film of ambition and flashes — enough to make you see what it was trying to be and enough to make you wish it had gotten there.
Lenin is now playing in cinemas. Language: Telugu.