I watched this movie one and three-fourth times. The first time, the theater experienced technical difficulties and so some of us took rain checks to go back on subsequent days. First time around, I was appalled - at the makeup, the punchless dialogues written by Kamal himself (he needs to get with Crazy ASAP), Asin's unsuccessful attempt at portraying the Agraharam girl (stop trying to be Urvashi for godsake), Kamal's giant ego for shoving atleast 7 unnecessary roles essayed by himself down the throats of the audience, the insipid music save for 'Kallai Mattum Kandal' and last but not the least the thought that Kamal and co. had a potentially great script in their hands and had blown it.
At the risk of rehashing some of the points made in a couple of very good reviews by Shobha Warrier and Bharat Ram (while there, check out the trivia at the end - good stuff), the movie started in grand fashion. I had goosebumps when the story of Rangaraja Nambi's ultimate demise was told from the 12th century. The sinking of Govindaraja Swamy statue (or idol) was to create moments of deja-vu as the movie progressed, I told myself. Afterall Vishnu has to come back to take care of the bad guys, doesn't He? And only that would explain the choice of the name for the movie. Apparently not. Govindarajar does make a re-entry but not the way I'd imagined.
As the story shifted to more modern times all I could think of was the makeup that made Kamal seem like a third-rate East European actor that you see in low-budget Hollywood movies. Now, to be fair to third-rate East European actors (or wannabes), he also looked like Frankenstein in the role of the Pathani (or was that a Tamil Muslim?). Frankenstein manages to dwarf a good actor like Nagesh but only literally. He was the worst of the lot. To me, the wheels came off the storyline when the characters of Asin and mottai paati were introduced. The inane exchanges between Asin and Kamal was a contrived attempt by Kamal to fill Crazy's shoes as dialogue writer. Substandard jokes such as the 'Kai-naati paati' joke by Vayyapuri and other such poor attempts weren't making things easy. Balram Naidu as the cop from RAW seemed more tolerable and he did provide a couple of funny moments. But one couldn't help notice that the seriousness of the plot was lost around the half-way mark. A dangerous bio-chemical vial capable of wiping out an entire city has found it's way to India but Kamal and the director are too caught up in trying to create MMKR moments. The plot had been trivialized. Bringing together 10 characters, for the sake of it and somehow ensuring they all have a hand in the ultimate outcome...aw, come on now.
The second time, I watched this movie in its entirety. I had the good sense to listen to my wife (no, seriously, marriage does have some uses) who prodded me to set aside my misgivings about all the irritants I outlined previously and try and look at it a little more impassively. This time none of those irritants bothered me (very fickle of me!!). I ended up enjoying a decent Tamil thriller. Agreed the plot wasn't that great, there wasn't scope for 10 characters yada yada... but I have to admit it was entertaining. Only the second time though.
Some points from the wife:
- Well choreographed stunt sequences especially the ones with Fletcher & Suresh's wife and Fletcher & the Japanese master
- Great camera work
- Fast moving storyline
- Mediocre to good acting (except Asin and Pathani Kamal who were both bad). Kamal as Fletcher and Bush, manages to get his American right too !! (Must add that he sort-of fumbled when Govind, the engineer working in the US for eons says nine-eleven when calling 911 - Imagine this "Hello, nine-eleven"...WTH, Are you calling a 7-Eleven?)
- Bushisms - cliched, but kudos to Kamal for thinking up these. Kamal joins such worthies as the folks at SNL, Frank Caliendo and Steve Bridges.
- Let's face it, we'd take crap from Shankar, Rajni and Kamal over trashy Vijay or Ajith starrers
- Do we have another poor man's Rajnikanth on our hands? I'm talking about Napolean as the Chozha Raja.
- And finally, as a friend of mine pointed out, thriller as a genre doesn't exist in Tamil movies. This was a neat attempt
4 comments:
Nice work - about time you started a blog ...
BTW, I suggest you have "Spoiler Alerts" when you are reviewing a movie. I, for one, have not seen the movie yet so did not want to risk reading that I would not want to find out!
I have an orkut link which beautifully explains all the 10 avatars..however, putting on my spoiler alert..I don't want to publish this link here as it gives away too many things about the film..(will email the author)
What a horrendous movie it was. The first 15mins of the movie had lot of promises, but eventually a very very badly made movie. The special effects were far from ordinary and the make-up was absolutely ridiculous. For those who still want to watch the movie, I would recommend them to wait until it comes on DVDs.
** Spoiler Alert **
Saw this movie last weekend. I have to agree with the author's initial assessment. This was a forgettable movie! I do not know where to begin to I will refrain from commenting.
But I have to add this - in every stream of life you only see technology get better with age; whereas here is one example of the opposite.
Kamal's make ups were extremely well done in "Indian" and "Avvai Shanmugi" - the latter, especially, was rather impressive. Here the Pathan, ex-CIA and Bush all had similar features! Either he was trying to get a cheaper make-up guy to work with or if it was the same person he must have gotten tired of Kamal's requests. This one's got a Razzie for make-up! All right, make it two - one for the special effects too!
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