GoodFella1980 Reviews

Maryan (2013)

Maryan - Ubiquitous Love‏

[8/10 · 6 August 2013]

Unfortunately. Unfortunately I have to begin this review with "Unfortunately", because unfortunately Tamil film fans who are used to the frenzied expressions of stars with some kind of weapon(s), looking directly into the screen, breaking the fourth wall and our senses, delivering kitschy, out-dated dialogues with volumes set to eleven, will find "Maryan" quite tedious and sluggish. It is quite unfortunate indeed that, while people cheered on an abysmal-at-best Singam-2, Tamil (or any other) film fans have sadly overlooked a technically-sound, engaging (in my opinion) tour-de-force film by Bharat Bala.

Does love have the power to move mountains? How does love instigate courage? Is there a limit to human endurance? Watch Maryan to find out. The love story in itself is nothing new. Girl loves boy; boy ignores girl. After a while, boy falls in love with girl. But, the treatment of it, especially the scene when after realising he in fact loves her, Maryan (Dhanush) trying to catch Panimalar's (Parvathy Menon) eye in a church during a wedding - absolute bliss; the viewer is never left with a bitter aftertaste due to the beautiful composition of director Bharat Bala.

I bet you will not see Dhanush and Parvathy Menon on screen; we are voyeurs to the lives and relationship of Maryan and Panimalar. For that, you will need actors with extraordinary screen presence and Dhanush and Parvathy Menon deliver the most powerful performances you will witness in recent times. Kudos to Bharat Bala and Sriram Rajan for writing a strong-willed character of Panimalar (unlike most female characters who appear for song-and-dance routines and be all "bubbly") for Parvathy Menon who with her emotive eyes makes us fall in love with her at first sight. Dhanush, if some of his recent characters have placed him among one of the very best actors, with his portrayal of Maryan, takes it... no travels onto a different plateau of acting. Portraying sadness, anger and fear as he is forced to call his employers to pay the ransom for his release (just that one scene should be sufficient to be shown in acting classes), cries and screams and breaks your heart, pleading in broken-English to release him and switching to Tamil so the terrorists would not understand that he in fact, is really on the phone with Panimalar.

Academy Award Winner A. R. Rahman. 'nuff said. While "Netru Aval Irunthaal" and "Enga Pona Raasa" tug at your heartstrings, "Nenje Ezhu" (additional thanks to Kutti Revathi) proves just the song to inspire Maryan to walk 300 km across the vast, barren desert to survive, brought on by the love he has for Panimalar. The songs are expertly placed without lagging the pace of the story. The camera of Marc Koninckx is just visual poetry at its heightened best. The editing by Vivek Harshan has garnered some criticism but I felt it was justified for the story.

One aspect that did not work for me was the bad guys, who were nothing more than mere adolescents, being tough with their AK-47's and strong, hallucinogenic opiates. While it is a sad state of affairs in Africa, the child soldiers did not create an impact as I would have wished. But even here the writers stand out; earlier in the film Maryan says "ellaarum nammala maathiri manushanga thaane" (everyone is just like us; we are all humans). This dialogue reverberates strongly as Maryan is kidnapped along with his co-workers and treated horribly (to say the least) and even when (SPOILERS) his co-workers are shot down, mercilessly in the course of the film. The film may not be without its flaws, but it is an essential watch. It is a quite quiet film (read it again, carefully, in case you missed it!). (SPOILERS) The reunion of Maryan and Panimalar itself is quite a serene one; there is not much of breaking-down emotional dialogues and/or sweeping background music score (Musicploitation?). Glances are exchanged and they are in each other's arms. You need seasoned actors to convey that, and they DO with flying colours. Maryan is a true testament to human endurance brought on that ubiquitous meaning/message of love.

Thuppakki (2012)

Thuppakki: Firing Blanks

[1/10 · 29 January 2013]

What makes a good or even great action movie? There are websites to look this up, surely. But, what makes a good/great Tamil action movie? If we were to go by the popular Tamil movie reviewers and audiences (for 2012), Thuppakki (Gun) seems to the one, edging others out. I despair as prominent director A. R. Murugadoss dumbs down a that made me want to slit my wrists or moreover kill myself with a thuppakki that Vijay produces in the movie, as an option for the bad guys to take his own life.

There is a hero Jagdish (Vijay), a silly sidekick Balaji (Sathyan), a sillier heroine Nisha (Kajal Agarwal) and the villain/bad guy/terrorist (what else is new?) with a roundhouse kick that challenges that of Chuck Norris, Vidyut Jamwal (dude has no name; no, not akin to the Dollars trilogy, he's just a puppet terrorist, almost to the point of being cute) and some others who die and some who don't. Story? Hmmm, good guy defeats the bad guy, and in-between he manages to squeeze in a few duets and perform comedy because (SPOILERS!!!),

a. Terrorism is a light-hearted subject b. We all know that in the end, it's all going to be okay

Now, don't get me wrong, the film ain't half bad (no let me change the fraction; the film is 9.5/10 - bad), and it is not what people raved on and on and on about; sadly it is a tawdry affair that blocked up my sinus and other cavities. Hey Muslims, forget USA, it is India that shows that all Muslims are terrorists in their "philums". And, what's with censoring names of cities and ministers? Are the audience of India so stupid, that there'd have been riots if the names had not been censored? Well, the audience did make a hit out of this, so…

Thuppakki has its moments and they are few (again, let me change the number to two; no more). But it was more a exploitative film which wanted us to jerk tears (is that a new term?) at the little Muslim kid, pointing to his dead father on the TV screen and had more plot holes than you can poke a stick at (intended). Vijay, at his nonchalant best, drags the movie (especially in the torture scenes, which by the way, are a hoot and a half), Kajal can't act if her life depended on it (there, someone had to say it) and the others are not so memorable with the exception of Vidyut Jamwal's roundhouse kick and Santosh Sivan's cinematography. Music is terrible (c'mon Harris Jeyaraj) and the rest, well, I can only say "meh". Here I would like to point out a prominent "Tamil phylum reviewer" who compared this garbage to Neethaane En Ponvasantham and favoured this mindless masala meandering of a movie over NEP. For me "Thuppakki" shot nothing but blanks. Oh, how I despair for you Tamil cinema… I'm waiting

Vishwaroopam (2013)

Vishwaroopam (2013)

[8/10 · 29 January 2013]

Terrorism; the word on the lips of many fear-inducing conversations, apocalyptic visions and knock-knock jokes. What is it all about? Kamal Haasan takes this touchy subject as the underlying theme of his latest film "Vishwaroopam", a slow burning thriller, which is more than your run-of-the-mill shootout with an open-ended climax, paving way for Vishwaroopam-2 (hopefully we get to see the sequel).

Without mulling over the story too much, which is after all, a classic battle story between the good and evil (but the defining lines are murky), we see the "behind the scenes" of what makes a terrorist, their ideals and the indoctrination of children to make them fight against anything and everything that is not part of the terrorists' belief system. It is a relief to watch fully fleshed-out characters of terrorists (or fighters as they likes to call themselves), whereas one-dimensional terrorists were the norm in most films. The training of Al-Qaeda by the protagonist/antagonist ("everyone has a double role, okay?") takes up most of the mid-section of the film and is beautifully shot by Sanu Varghese as the picturesque Afghan landscapes provide the backdrop for some of the most gruesome scenes.

Some scenes are exceptional, especially where the main antagonist Omar (chillingly portrayed by Rahul Bose), uses his hand to mimic a gun and points it at his own son's temple and mouths "boof" (because his son wants to be doctor and not a Jihadist), which, is more eerie than the actual gunfights. The US military incursion into Afghanistan has been painstakingly shot (and, if I'm not mistaken, the first appearance of a Black Hawk in a Tamil film) and a couple of death scenes may prove too graphic for some viewers. The screenplay cleverly switches between timelines and some dialogues bring the house down (Alfred Hitchcock has even said that a slight comic moment would be amplified in a really tense situation). A good example is that scene between an interrogator and Nirupama (Pooja Kumar).

Interrogator: So, you must pray to Allah, huh? Nirupama: No… My god has four hands. Interrogator: What kind of god has four hands? How do you crucify him? Nirupama: We don't crucify our god! Interrogator: Then? Nirupama: We dunk him in the sea!!!

Shankar-Eshaan-Loy provide excellent background score to the film, especially the scene where, with blasting klaxon sound (the intro to "Evanenru Ninaithaai", the timid Kathak-dance teacher Vishwanath transforms into "Wiz", a mean-green-killing-machine. As a performer, writer and director, Mr. Kamal Haasan has excelled in making an exceptional film on an international stage which is bound to take Tamil cinema to the next (or next-next?) level, if it weren't for the petty politics and media-hungry-scum circling the listless waters hungrily, piggy-backing on Kamal Haasan's celebrity. I have seen the film THREE times in the cinema; I could not find ONE scene depicting Islam/Muslims in an offensive manner. Here's a certificate the Indian censors forgot to give this film: "Rated I: For Intelligent Viewers Only".

Enthiran (2010)

A Study of Propaganda

[1/10 · 11 November 2010]

The day was finally set. I was going to watch "Endhiran", the most expensive Indian movie ever made. The "Avatar" of India, the posters claimed. I will admit upfront, I am not a huge fan of either Shankar or Rajinikanth, but there was a glimmer of hope as it was a screenplay by the late Sujatha, a true technocrat whose books and prose I have cherished over the years (would he have coined the term "Robo Sapiens"?). As Sujatha had passed away during the pre-production of the movie, I was well aware that the screenplay would have been completed by Shankar (Madhan Karky is also credited as a co-script writer). The initial reviews had lauded the movie claiming it to be a benchmark in Indian cinema and how Indian cinema has improved by leaps and bounds and how the movie will stand up to any Hollywood production of recent years.

The movie proved be a huge disappointment (except a few scenes) and it also proved the fact that without a cohesive screenplay, any movie, even the most expensive one, would turn out to be a fiasco and dishearten the non-emotionally-invested viewers. Let's face it; the movie would have never worked with that screenplay, without a huge-name star to portray the protagonist, the innocent robot Chitti (Speed 1 THz, Memory 1 Zettabyte) and the antagonist (Chitti v.2.0). Rajini, a force/star he may be, but it is the actor that I miss, whom I last saw in "Thalapathy" (1991). I was subject to over-the-top performances and over-the-top everything that I have come to witness in Shankar movies. Aishwarya Rai, as Sana, is beautiful (as always) but has little else to do, as others, who just appear in the scenes without leaving a mark. It is understandable that Shankar wanted Rajini to carry the movie, but I was used to the Rajini that I saw on-screen; he did not bring anything new to this movie. I was comforted in the fact, that there were no build-ups to the Dr. Vaseegaran character and no opening songs claiming the protagonist to be the all conquering singing, dancing hero of the silver screen.

The songs, good as they were, only managed to drag the flow (if there was any) of the already stumbling screenplay and the second half seemed to drag. I believe it is now time for Thamizh movies (or any movies, except musicals) to not have song sequences which just test our patience as I did not gain anything from a song set in Machu Picchu as Dr. Vaseegaran was contemplating the future of Chitti. Plot holes galore in this movie which took two years to complete; we are shown that as Sana is kidnapped by Chitti v.2.0, the police randomly firing at the car; were they not worried that Sana might be killed in the cross-fire or were they all crack-shots? And, did we need to see Chitti conversing with mosquitoes? I felt angry for spending the money and wasting my time watching this utter garbage, which some of my friends have claimed to be the best Thamizh film ever! Shankar has taken elements from "Bicentennial Man" and "I, Robot" and served up a diarrhea inducing meal on a silver platter. It was really hard to believe that Santhanam and Karunas to be scientists, but even that seemed tolerable compared to the "romantic" scene between Aishwarya and Rajini (Sana wants to end their relationship) where Vaseegaran asks Sana to return the kisses he had given during the course of their relationship. The scene takes us to a very artificial looking desert as Rajini plays the guitar (if you can believe his strumming - looked more like he was moving his hands up and down the guitar) and a beautiful song wasted in "Kadhal Anukkal".

The one scene that I found really impressive, was the Chitti (v.2.0) metamorphosing fight sequence in the climax, supported by the background score with the metallic edge as provided by Academy Award winner A. R. Rahman. I expected more from Chitti (v.2.0); Rajini should have explored more with what makes Chitti (v.2.0) tick, but, as he said in the Endhiran audio launch, he had followed Shankar's directions to a T, which, in my opinion has backfired as Chitti (v.2.0) exaggerates its' speech and gestures as the much-detested Shankarism comes into play in the third act. I did not empathize with Chitti as it dismantled itself; I found it neither moving nor the fitting end to the most expensive movie of Indian cinema. My absolute anger lies in the fact that this so-called-excuse for a movie was marketed as a challenge to Hollywood productions and the announcement of Thamizh cinema on to the world stage. If the rest of the world considers "Endhiran" as a token Thamizh movie, I will be among the first to completely switch off Thamizh movies and deny that I ever watched them. Dot.

Unnaipol Oruvan (2009)

Unnai Pol Oruvan: A Retrospective

[10/10 · 20 October 2009]

Very rarely does a Tamil movie make me sit up straight and gaze in awe at the big screen. When the actors live the characters and the technical aspects do not stand out, but, rather support the screenplay which moves with such an incredible pace as it happened in UPO, I knew I had witnessed a milestone in Tamil Cinema. And, if we, the Tamil Cinema audience (who appreciate quality movies) have mainly one man to thank for, it is none other than the one who celebrates his golden year in the film industry, Mr. Kamal Haasan.

This is neither a movie review nor an appreciatory message on Mr. Haasan, but my thoughts on the movie and a few issues that seem to crop up in some of the reviews for UPO.

Kamal as a "Common Man": some people find it hard to differentiate Kamal Haasan the movie star and Kamal Haasan the versatile actor. If you understand Kamal Haasan as an actor, you should be prepared to get whatever he throws at you. There have been so many characters from "Kalyana Raman" to "Dasavatharam", where he has portrayed a range of characters in all walks of life. If you had taken that in mind into the movie theatre, you may not have been imbued with his "star value". I deliberately wrote that within quotes, because I believe (my opinion) the great characters we have witnessed on-screen were rather common men (in movie terms, character actors) than leading men. One of the greatest Hollywood examples would be "Travis Bickle" played by Robert De Niro in the "Taxi Driver (1976)". Travis as Kamal Haasan's character in UPO has his own sense of justice. He metes out justice as he sees fit.

Kamal's Viewpoint of Terrorism: it is best that we do not assume that the "Common Man's" viewpoint of terrorism in UPO is that of Kamal Haasan. Would we as the good people of this earth, want "instant justice" like "2-minute-noodles"? It would not be surprising to see many people divided over this issue. We have seen many movies where the protagonists fight the evil almost single-handedly and save the damsel in distress at the end of the day and ride into the sunset. Is the "Common Man" in UPO a protagonist? Has he triumphed over evil at the end of the day? I believe the answer to both questions to be a firm "NO". The common man walks the fine line between the good and the bad (as we the good people like to call the "necessary evil"). As a common man he has seen the governments play games with each other (clue: the TV program "Mush & Bush") and red tapes all over when the situation could have been solved instantly. So, the "Common Man" of UPO proceeds to decide the fate of the terrorists.

Kamal & Secularism: why was one of the terrorists a Hindu? Is this Kamal again forcing his secularist issues on the audience? Was Kamal trying to play it safe? I believe not. When Naseeruddin Shah played the "Common Man" in "A Wednesday", the audience watched the movie theatres with an instilled sense of justice as Naseeruddin Shah is by nature, a Muslim. Unfortunately there are people, who would see Kamal Haasan (by birth a Hindu and now an atheist who orchestrates to kill Muslim terrorists), and will call him politically incorrect and burn his effigy.

Unnaipol Oruvan works as an "engrossing thriller" a clichéd review would say, but as far as I am concerned, Kamal Haasan has yet again lashed out against the mundane and ignorant existence of the common men. Especially his monologue scene as tears flow from his eyes, we watch like most people who are unable to do anything lest we speak out. How much more of evil must we face before we are pushed over the edge?

Thalapathi (1991)

Best of Rajnikanth

[10/10 · 27 February 2003]

A fight between two brothers (Rajnikanth and Arvindswamy) is a classy version on Modern Mahabbaratha, is truly unique. Maniratnam has adapted the screenplay to the modern version and it's really awesome. Mammootty as Rajnikanth's friend Deva is amazing. Music and cinematography by Illayaraja and Santosh Sivan (The terrorist) commend each other. For me it's the best gangster movie made in India. Just loved the movie from beginning till end.