What does Salaar maker Prashant Neel think is the actual appeal of stunts, if not the action?

In a day and age when action co-ordinators are going out of their way to make stunts look phenomenal, and audiences have access to such content from across the world, making the action in an action film pop is a challenging task. But director Prashant Neel, who is set to present his action film Salaar Ceasefire about the most violent man says that the appeal of such blocks is not necessarily the stunts themselves and the level of violence unleashed. According to Prashant, what is more important and actually appeals to audiences is the reason behind said action. Action scenes by themselves are not very appealing, he reckons. It’s why the action is happening that strikes a chord. The emotion behind it is why audiences look forward to the moments before a fight starts. That, says Prashant, speaking to Galatta Plus, is the real thrill and coming up with a new reason every time is the big challenge for a filmmaker.

Salaar promotions dropped in other South states, here’s why Prabhas was advised not to be part of the events | Exclusive 

In the course of the conversation, the filmmaker also spoke about how a film’s pan-India status does not necessarily change his writing process because some of the best scenes in his earlier films had nothing to do with scale or elevation. It was about the smaller scenes that clicked with audiences, like, for instance, the ‘bun scene’ in KGF: Chapter 1. In Salaar also, Prashant says that he has put in a lot of such small moments, because the bombastic ones are bound to follow any way. And for him, it is those small moments that make a pan-Indian film.

Salaar: Ceasefire, meanwhile, is the first of a two-part story about two friends who’d die for each other, but end up becoming foes. The film has Prabhas in the lead as Deva, with Prithviraj Sukumaran as Varadharaja Mannar. In theatres across the world on December 22, Salaar has been made as a Telugu film, dubbed in Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Hindi. The film also stars Shruti Haasan, Pramod, Tinu Anand, Jagapathi Babu, Eashwari Rao, Shreya Reddy, Garuda Ram, Naveen Shankar, among others.