Tag Archives: Rekhs

Varisu

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Vamshi Paidipally is usually associated with films in Telugu but this time he’s worked with Thalapathy Vijay to make Varisu in Tamil. Thankfully, Varisu is better than Vijay’s last film, Beast, although I think it would be difficult to make a worse movie! Although the story here is nothing new and the setting in a rich and privileged family tends to grate, the songs are fun, the action plentiful and Vijay is in top form.

Vijay plays Vijay Rajendran, the youngest son of rich businessman Rajendran (R. Sarathkumar) who has incorporated his other two sons into his mining and shipping business. Vijay has been disinherited for refusing to take part in his father’s succession plans and has managed instead to develop a start-up company distributing food to people in need. His success is apparently down to an MBA degree, which magically seems to give him amazing knowledge and ability in business and ensures that everything he suggests works amazingly well. If only! Meanwhile, Rajendran has set up his other two sons to compete against each other to become his successor and run the business empire he has developed.

But all is not well in the Rajendran family. Eldest son Jai (Srikanth) is married to Aarthi (Sangeetha Krish) with a daughter Ria (Sanjana Tiwari) but is also having an affair with Smita (Nandini Rai). Middle son Ajay (Shaam) is happily married but is struggling with his work looking after his father’s interests at the dock and is in debt to a financier Mukesh (Ganesh Venkatraman) as he tries to develop his own business ideas to impress his father. To add to Rajendran’s woes, his wife Sudha (Jayasudha) is unhappy at the forced separation from her youngest son, and his chief rival Jayaprakash (Prakash Raj) is snapping at his heels at every possible opportunity. When his doctor, family friend Dr Anand (Prabhu) tells him he only has months to live it seems to final blow that will fracture the family beyond repair.

But of course that’s not going to happen – enter Vijay and his amazing business prowess to save the day. Naturally Vijay is also able to defeat thugs at the docks, run off a gang of people smugglers and otherwise destroy any and all attacks on the family, his father and himself. The film settles into the usual ‘Vijay as all conquering hero’ and we know that everything will work out all right. While Vijay saves the business, sorts out his brothers and rescues Ria from kidnappers, there are plenty of fight sequences, numerous songs and a brief romance with Divya (Rashmika Mandanna), Aarthi’s sister.

What works here are the songs and the action sequences. There are a lot of songs, which I suspect is to help offset the thinness of the plot. The music is by Thaman S with lyrics by Vivek, and together they have come up with toe-tapping numbers that fit into the film well. Vijay dances up a storm with Rasjmika and a large number of enthusiastic backing dancers, and the songs are full of energy, bursting with colour, and just lots of fun. Best of all, rekhs has managed to make the translated lyrics rhyme and actually sound like songs, which adds to the overall emotional lift of each number. Unfortunately though, the background music would have benefitted from being turned down a few notches and at times I really couldn’t make much out other than just noise.

The action sequences are also well choreographed and Vijay smoothly eliminates every villain that attempts to stop him on his path to the top. It all looks effortless, which I’m sure means there was a lot of work put into these sequences, and it pays off. Perhaps more surprising are the number of rather odd diversions in the story that appear to have been included solely to allow fight sequences to be added. For a corporate and family drama, there are a lot of moments where Vijay has to fight his way out of a corner and, although these action sequences are impressive, they mostly don’t fit well into the rest of the story.

More problematic though is the rest of the film. For a start there are outdated attitudes on view from most of the male characters, who have little time or thought for the women in their lives. As a result, most of the female characters are thinly drawn and leave little impression although to be fair, all of the cast outside of Vijay have minimal impact on the film. The romance with Rashmika Mandanna is over before it starts and she mainly just looks pretty in the songs. Jayasudha does the usual mom routine, but she’s mostly relegated to serving food and worrying about her husband and family. As the two brothers, Srikanth and Shaam have little to do before the interval and not much more in the second half. Even R. Sarathkumar and Prakash Raj, who should have been tearing up the screen with their rivalry, are both very much side-lined by Vijay and end up appearing ineffectual and almost irrelevant. Everyone except Vijay appears one dimensional, which further erodes any plausibility of the story. While Vijay is excellent, the hero-centric nature of the film even starts to dull his shine and it’s only the energy of the songs that keeps the film moving along. The second half does have more energy than the first, but by that stage I was getting tired of Vijay’s relentless ability to conquer every difficulty so easily. A little more failure would have stopped the character from being quite so insufferable by the end of the film.

In the midst of all this, I do have to mention that at least the subtitles were excellent. During the interval I realised that I hadn’t even realised I was reading subtitles at all for a change! Usually I’m distracted by poor grammar, spelling mistakes and odd phrasing, but rekhs and her team have added subs that are easily readable, accurate and which make total sense. It makes a huge difference to be able to concentrate fully on the action and not have part of my attention diverted by trying to work out what is being said.

This is Vijay’s film from start to finish and he’s in almost every frame. Like most of his more recent films, this is made for fans, and there are plenty of nods to previous Vijay films throughout (thanks rekhs for the handy notes in the subs for those of us who didn’t get all the references!). I enjoyed the songs and the action but the story needed more depth, as did the characterisations of the supporting cast. It’s not a terrible film, but it’s not Vijay’s best, despite his energetic performance. Entertaining for a one-time watch, but wait for streaming if you’re not a Vijay fan.

Vikram (2022)

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2022 is proving to be an excellent year for Indian cinema. Pushpa, RRR, KGF2 and now Vikram have really raised the bar and we’re only halfway through the year! In Vikram, Lokesh Kanagaraj delves back into the world he created with Kaithi and adds more threads to his tale of drug dealing, police corruption and gang warfare. With a who’s who of Southern Indian actors, an engrossing story and fabulous action sequences, Vikram is another ‘not to be missed’ film that deserves to be seen at the cinema.

The story begins with Police Chief Jose (Chemban Vinod Jose) bringing in a ‘black-ops’ team headed by an agent known only as Aram (Fahadh Faasil). The police have been sent a series of videos showing black-masked terrorists murder the local Head of Narcotics Stephen Raj (Hareesh Peradi), ACP Prabhanjan (Kalidas Jayaram) and Prabhanjan’s adopted father Karnan (Kamal Haasan). With the final murder seemingly unconnected, Aram immediately starts investigating Karnan, trying to find any possible link that might explain the deaths. His investigations reveal a man who had turned to drink and prostitutes after the death of his adopted son, but no link to the case Prabhanjan was involved with before his death. However, in the course of his inquiries, Aram discovers a missing shipment of drugs belonging to drug kingpin Sandhanam (Vijay Sethupathi) and identifies two more men involved with the drug trade who may be in danger. Veerapandian ((Gowtham Sundarajan) and Rudra Prathap (Aruldoss) are both likely targets as they reportedly know the location of the missing shipments, but despite the police, Sandhanam and Aram all trying to protect the men, the ‘men in black’ are hard to evade.

Aram and his men have no boundaries and as such threaten, beat and bully their way to the information required. Oddly, during the investigation Aram also marries Gayathri (Gayathrie Shankar) despite her ignorance about his real job and seeming unconcern about the man she finds being held prisoner in Amar’s offices. Apart from this one glimpse into a possible softer side, Fahadh Faasil’s Amar is as brutal and dangerous as the men he is seeking. As one of the top actors in the South, Fahadh Faasil is always impressive, but he is electrifying here to the point where he almost manages to steal attention away from Kamal Haasan. Fahadh’s body language, expressions and dialogue delivery are simply brilliant throughout and when his life starts to fall apart, his portrayal of a man at the limit of his ability to cope is excellent. One moment that really stands out is his absolute frustration when trying to resuscitate Prabhanjan’s young son which was simply perfect (standard filmi medical miracles aside of course). I also recognised the Queen of Subtitles rekhs as the dubbing voice for Dr Annie on the line assisting Amar with the process which added just the right note to the whole scene.

Vijay Sethupathi has played the role of a demented brutal gangster before, so the character of Sandhanam isn’t a stretch for him, but Vijay gives the character plenty of traits that set the gangster apart from his previous roles. Sandhanam has 3 wives, and there is an excellent montage where we see Sandhanam, his family and one of his wives practicing target shooting, perhaps to show he’s a supporter of equal opportunities for all. He certainly believes in keeping it in the family since his the main members of Sandhanam’s gang producing the drug supply are all from his large extended family, and he is ultra-protective of them, although happily expends his henchmen elsewhere when necessary. Able to switch between fake doctor, urbane businessman and unhinged gangster with a tendency to use his own product, Sandhanam is more complex than first appears and Vijay Sethupathi brings out all of these different facets of his character even with limited screen time.

Kamal Haasan is the focus of the film and despite not appearing much in the first half, his presence is still felt as the ghost manipulating much of the action. He is amazingly agile in the fight scenes, and if he appears rather less sprightly in an early dance sequence, there are reasons behind that which are revealed later in the story. This is another outstanding performance from one of the greats of Tamil cinema and he does not put a foot wrong. There is a good mix of humour in the dialogue too, and the addition of scenes with his family help to break up the actions sequences and add more fuel to the film’s fury. And if you thought Yash had a big gun in KGF2, think again – guns are so passé when you can have a cannon instead! The other support cast are also excellent from Narain reprising his role as Inspector Bejoy to Chemban Vinod Jose, Kalidas Jayaram, Sampath Ram and Ramesh Thilak. My favourite moment in the entire film comes from Agent Tina (Vasanthi) and I also loved the totally unhinged appearance by Suriya, who has a brief appearance at the end.

The action sequences here by Anbariv are excellent and Girish Gangadharan captures the effects beautifully. The scale of the film is huge with wide shots over the city of Chenni, massive gunfire and explosion sequences and then a total change to close-ups of Sandhanam’s gold teeth. Girish ensures it all looks stunning regardless. Even at 3 hours of runtime, nothing in the film drags and with Anirudh’s soundtrack underpinning the action and emotions of the film, the balance is perfect. Thanks to rekhs who has subtitled the entire film with perfect English although the use of ‘shucks’ and ‘crap’ as substitutes for the actual dialogue did make me smile. I’m assuming there is a censorship reason behind the change since the original words are clearly audible. Thanks too for the yellow font which is much more readable than white.

Vikram is high octane action with plenty of plot detail and connections that make the plot intriguing as well as exciting. The performances are uniformly excellent and I honestly think the film is many times better than anything I’ve seen from Hollywood in recent times. While a number of the characters from Kaithi resurface, Vikram is a self-contained story that can be enjoyed without having seen the earlier film, and the references aren’t so obscure that it’s impossible to work out previous links. I’m looking forward to the next instalment and seeing just what Lokesh Kanagaraj comes up with next in his mad and crazy world of drug lords and special agents.

Beast

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I really was in two minds about posting this review. I usually really enjoy Vijay films and can find something to like about almost any film, but I just couldn’t find much that was redeeming about Beast. The film tries to be an action thriller comedy but fails on every one of those 3 aspects. There are a few good action set pieces, but just as many poorly thought-out scenes that just don’t work. The comedy is often inane, and the real laughs come from the attempts at making this a thriller, which are so bad they are funny. Nothing about this film worked for me except perhaps the first action sequence and Selvaraghavan as a security advisor attempting to negotiate the release of hostages. I really wanted to like Beast, but sadly I didn’t enjoy it at all.

I’ve previously watched Nelson’s début film Kolamaavu Kokila which was pretty good, so it is really disappointing that Beast is such a disaster. There are so many problems that it’s difficult to know where to start, but essentially the plot never engages or makes any kind of sense, while the supposed hilarity of terrorists being stabbed/shot/decapitated in front of young children is just grotesque. Beast starts well enough with RAW agent Veera (Vijay) capturing the terrorist Umar Farooq (Lillput) in typical ‘one-man-army’ style. The action sequences are good here and it doesn’t matter that none of them are realistic because it’s the usual fare expected from a Vijay action movie. But then a young girl is killed when Veera’s intelligence officer decides that it’s more important to capture Farooq than to save any civilians in the area and the plot starts to unravel.

Veera is devastated by his actions and immediately leaves RAW but is still traumatised some 11 months later. In what initially appears to be a very progressive move, he goes to see a therapist (Prudhvi Raj) but bizarrely the therapist cracks a few terrible jokes at Veera’s expense and then drags him to a wedding. There he meets Preethi (Pooja Hegde) and after a brief conversation and a quick bop they decide they are in love and get engaged. They ignore the small problem of Preethi’s current fiancé Ramachandran (Sathish Krishnan) who is still infatuated and refuses to believe that Preethi doesn’t want to marry him. This is somehow supposed to be funny, but it’s just plain stupid, while Ramachandran’s antics are consistently irritating and infantile. In an attempt to add even more puerile comedy, Yogi Babu and Redin Kingsley pop up as two inept mall workers but nothing they do is amusing at all. 

Preethi introduces Veera to her boss Domnic (VTV Ganesh) who runs “Domnic and Soldiers”, a security company so bad they are only employed by 1 shopping mall – which has just decided to terminate their contract. Veera goes along with Preethi and Domnic to the mall for further discussions, but just as they are leaving, the mall is hijacked by a group of terrorists led by Umar Saif (Ankur Ajit Vikal). Right from the start the hijack seems doomed to fail since the terrorists don’t appear to know what they are doing. Most seem to be roaming around the mall paying no attention to their surroundings, and only 2 are tasked to guard all the hostages. Naturally Veera’s spidey senses started tingling before the hijack started and he manages to find a hideaway along with Preethi, her boss and her ex-fiancé.

There are a number of action sequences set in the mall as Veera fights back against the terrorists and attempts to free the hostages. The problem is that none of these work very well, and some, such as Vijay fighting on roller blades, are just awkward. We have the usual 1 indestructible man against many and since Veera has no armour but the hostages are wearing excessive amounts of protective gear, the fact that bullets magically miss Veera while his always strike home makes for rather dull viewing. The whole hijacking sequence seems to be played for laughs except that it’s really not funny to watch Vijay chop up gunmen in front of children. The first decapitation is quite funny though. After that, the action is predictable (notwithstanding the bizarre decision to use roller blades) and there are a few quite horrific moments that are particularly jarring when set into comedy sequences. 

While the hostage situation is going on there is a corrupt politician (Shaji Chen) trying to play both sides, and this is where the film picks up pace adding some amusing scenes with National Security Advisor Althaf Hussain (Selvaraghavan). Who knew one of my favourite Tamil directors could act so well? His comedic timing here is good, and he stands out as one of the best performances in the film. As much as I want him to keep making films as a director, I do hope we get to see more of him in front of the cameras was well.

To be fair, it’s not that Vijay puts in a poor performance – in fact he’s livelier and more enthusiastic here than in his last outing Master, but the role is too schizophrenic to succeed. Jolting from lean, mean, killing machine to rollerskating comedian is a step too far and not even Vijay’s natural charm can save the character. Veera is always just Vijay acting and so nothing feels real – not the initial trauma of the mission gone wrong, the contrived romance or even the idea that he can take on all the terrorists by himself. There is a distinct lack of empathy in the character which is odd given his supposed issue with killing a child, and habit of hearing wailing children at odd moments. However, at no time during the hijack situation does Veera seem to even think of the hostages as people, and they are just the bargaining chip to let him kill terrorists in ever more bloody ways.

The rest of the cast don’t fare well either. Pooja Hegde is completely wasted in a role where she has nothing to do although Aparna Das makes more of an impression in her brief appearance as the politician’s daughter. Shaji Chen chews scenery at every opportunity and while Ankur Ajit Vikal is appropriately cold, he doesn’t get enough screen time or dialogue to make him a convincing opponent. It doesn’t help that the songs are woeful as well, with nonsensical lyrics and bizarre costuming that distracts from the choreography. The final song is called Jolly O Gymkhana (!) and features the backing dancers, Vijay and Pooja in tropical costumes wandering from a beach into a snowstorm for no apparent reason. Nonsense music, nonsense lyrics and nonsense choreography I guess all go together but the result is a mess. I noticed the backing dancers more than the main leads since they seemed to be having a much better time, but none of the songs were enjoyable at all. 

Thanks to rekhs for at least supplying subtitles that made sense even if nothing else about the film did. I can’t even mention the finale sequence which was jaw-droppingly terrible although the special effects were pretty good. The main problem with Beast is a lack of consistency in Veera’s character, added to a storyline that makes no sense. The jumble of action, comedy and political thriller needed a taut and well defined storyline with crisp action, but there is almost the complete opposite here. I left the cinema disappointed and sad because I wanted to like Beast, but there was little for me to enjoy. Maybe wait for streaming when it’s possible to watch the first sequence, Selvaraghavan and ignore the rest.