Tag Archives: Sija Rose

Rekka (2016)

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Rathina Shiva’s 2016 film is a by-the-numbers mass action film that relies heavily on Vijay Sethupathi’s charm and ability to fully inhabit a character, but still fails to deliver a completely engaging story. Rekka mixes the usual masala ingredients with a plot about a crusading lawyer on a mission to unite couples in love, but there is nothing here that hasn’t been done many times before. What does make the film worth a look is the spectacle of Vijay Sethupathi acting his way through a typical hero role complete with dramatic walking, slow-mo fight scenes and big song and dance numbers. Simply – Rekka is Vijay does mass!

The story follows Shiva (Vijay Sethupathi) as he kidnaps reluctant brides on their wedding day and reunites them with their one true love. Surprisingly he seems to find a large number of separated lovers in Kumbakonam and everyone seems to think that Vijay is performing a fine civic service with his matrimonial kidnapping business. However, he seems to have made a mistake when he kidnaps the wife-to-be of local gangster David (Harish Uthaman) who turns up at Shiva’s family home to discover exactly who has run off with his fiancée. David has more reasons to make him unhappy as his rival Cheliyan (Kabir Duhan Singh) has killed David’s younger brother, apparently as a way to up the feud between them. It seems an odd reason to take a life, but that’s not the most irrational plot point by a long way.

Shiva and his father Ratnam (K.S. Ravikumar) have seen David slaughter someone in cold blood in downtown Kumbakonam, so they know exactly what kind of person they are dealing with. With Shiva’s sister Kavitha getting married, David has the perfect opportunity for revenge with the result that Shiva agrees to kidnap a girl from Madurai and bring her to David as his new wife. What Shiva doesn’t know is that the girl, Bharathi (Lakshmi Menon) is engaged to Cheliyan and her father Manivasagam is a corrupt politician with an army of thugs of his own. Added in to all of this are the mysteries of Mala (Sija Rose), who appears to Shiva as a hallucination, and Selvam (Kishore), a down and out doctor that Shiva tries to help.

So far the story isn’t too bad. Standard masala fare but the fight scenes are fun with plenty of gravity defying, 4WD smashing antics and although Vijay Sethupathi looks awkward and uncomfortable in the big dance numbers, he looks much more at ease in the action sequences. However, things go downhill fast when he travels to Madurai and finds the girl he has to kidnap. Lakshmi Menon’s Bharathi is a few shillings short of a pound and literally just sets eyes on Shiva for a few seconds before deciding that he is the love of her life. Well, okay, I get that it’s Vijay and he is pretty cool, but Bharathi just looks and leaps into elopement without any more thought than a lemming when faced with a cliff.

A few seconds later and we see where Bharathi gets her craziness from, as her mother’s reaction to her proposed elopement is a directive to make sure she says goodbye to her grandmother. No, just no – anyone that ditsy would want the full-blown wedding experience even if she was the daughter of some bigwig in Madurai and already engaged to a ruthless gangster. Especially if she was the daughter of some bigwig in Madurai! Nothing about the whole elopement seems right and the developing love story between Bharathi and Shiva is hindered by the lack of chemistry between the two actors. Shiva just wants to get back his sister’s wedding and be done with the crazy lady, while Bharathi seems too mentally unhinged to know what she actually wants. None of it makes any sense, but then that is the beauty of mass masala – it doesn’t need to make sense!

There’s still the mystery of Mala, and the second half has a flashback sequence to explain why Shiva goes around stealing brides and why he feels so guilty about Selvam. It’s rather long winded and since Mala and Selvam are more peripheral characters, Rathina Shiva spends more time than seems necessary on this part of the story. The flashback does tie up a few loose ends but since it really doesn’t matter why Shiva kidnaps reluctant brides, it seems to be a needless diversion from the main story.

Lakshmi Menon’s Bharathi is disturbingly manic and makes some bad choices that further reduce the characters credibility. No-one could ever really be that dim as to run away with someone they had just met unless they were really in desperate circumstances, and Bharathi doesn’t appear to be distressed by her upcoming engagement at all. There is a vague explanation later, but it’s not particularly persuasive so for the most part I kept thinking Shiva needed to cut his losses and run far, far away.

Vijay Sethupathi really is the saving grace of the film and his presence makes up for a lot of the inadequacies of the script and screenplay. Somehow, even though he’s playing a mass hero, Vijay still finds moments where he is an ‘actor’ rather than a hero, with the result that Shiva is a more appealing character than expected. His introduction scene has him playing chess, not the usual activity of choice for most action heroes, and he has some good emotional bonding moments with his father. This is his film all the way, and he makes his character work, no matter how ludicrous the situation. He’s better than expected in the slo-mo walking scenes and absolutely fabulous in the fight sequences where he twirls villains around his head like batons and systematically smashes them into SUV’s, street stalls piles of boxes and any other staple mass prop that happens to be around.

Basically a list of places I’ve worked in TN!

The rest of the cast has less to do, but Harish Uthaman is fine as a generic snarling bad guy, although even though he has less screen time, Kabir Duhan Singh does appear more frightening and genuinely nasty in his role as Cheliyan. Sathish pops up as Shiva’s friend Keerai and is good in a role that requires him to tone down the comedy. D. Imman’s music is OK, but doesn’t make me want to re-listen to the soundtrack, while everything else about the film is pretty much as standard for a mass movie.

This isn’t a Vikram Vedha or even a Sethupathi, but it is a Vijay Sethupathi film and that makes it a touch above standard mass fare. A less demented heroine would have helped immensely but the standard story of good guy vs bad guy still works despite the distractions Rathina Shiva throws in the way. Not Vijay’s best film in 2016, but still worth a watch to see him in full-on mass hero persona wiping the floor with assorted bad guys and gangsters, while still keeping his trademark sweet smile. 3 stars.

Bairavaa (2017)

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bairavaa

Step into the cinema at any point during Bairavaa and you could be forgiven for mistaking it for almost any of Vijay’s previous films. The only thing that seems to vary in these masala outings is his attire, while everything else (love interest, villain, ‘comedy’ friend, evil henchmen etc) is identical. In his latest mass film Bairavaa, even the trusty masala formula fails to deliver as expected mainly due to poorly realised villains and dull, repetitive fight scenes. Not even the songs are inspiring and it’s only Vijay’s presence and on-screen charisma that makes it possible to sit through the full 169 minute run-time. There are some laughs, one or two fight scenes that work a little better than the rest and a couple of good songs but overall Bharathan’s latest release fails to impress.

Bairavaa (Vijay) is a recovery agent for a bank who don’t seem to mind that he uses rather direct methods to reclaim outstanding funds. This leads inevitably to the first fight scene as the bank manager sends Bairavaa out to collect money from a thug who likes to play cricket. The fight itself is quite cleverly choreographed with Vijay imitating cricket stars and using a cricket ball instead of his fists to flatten thugs, but despite the novelty it isn’t particularly exciting and there is absolutely no sense of suspense. It’s a given from the start that Bairavaa will be walking out of there with the money and that all of the rowdies will be writhing around on the floor. And that’s the problem with almost every other fight scene in the movie too. Even when the numbers of rent-a-thugs get upped and then upped again, there is no stopping the one-man army that is Bairavaa. The fights become an unending parade of rowdies being thrown up, down and around in slow-mo while Bairavaa barely breaks into a sweat. The exceptions mainly come in the second half when there is a little more at stake, but overall, even with a few stylish moves thrown in here and there, the fights are mostly monotonously predictable and uninspiring.

After meeting Malarvizhi (Keerthy Suresh) at a wedding and falling instantly in love, Bairavaa discovers she has a problem back home in Tirunelveli after she is attacked by a gang of thugs at Koyambedu bus station. This leads to a flashback that explains her predicament and why she is being targeted by businessman and self-styled champion of education PK (Jagapati Babu). PK is aided in his various criminal activities by Kottai Veeran (Daniel Balaji) and his merry gang of rowdies, while Malarvizhi is supported by her sister (Sija Rose), grandfather (Vittal Rao) and Uncle Narayanan (Thambi Ramaiah). Malarvizhi has taken PK to court to prove that he was responsible for the death of her friend Vaishali (Aparna Vinod) in his substandard medical college and that the college’s explanation for her death is completely untrue. PK has been warned by the judge that the upcoming final hearing should not interrupt Malarvizhi’s studies or endanger her health with the result that instead of killing Malarvizhi, PK tries every possible method of intimidation to make her break down and give up her fight. Naturally Bairavaa takes up Malarvizhi’s cause and immediately starts to oppose PK and his allies.

Sadly PK is a one-dimensional villain who does little other than sneer at the camera and order his seemingly self-replicating gangs of thugs to put an end to Bairavaa. His henchman Kottai Veeran has a little more to work with, but both men are purely obstacles to be overcome in Bairavaa’s pursuit of the girl. There is presumably some sort of message in the revelation that some private colleges are purely money making exercises and Malarvizhi does her best to promote the cause of independent women everywhere, but at the end of the day she is reliant on Bairavaa to defeat the thigs. Her methods of contacting solicitors, providing evidence and the like are casually destroyed by PK and Kottai Verran using methods that seem unlikely to work in real life. Malarvizhi is a fairly typical Tamil heroine in that she has some backbone and a promising career but still falls for the hero in less time that it takes her to find the bus home to Tirunelveli. I’ve yet to see Keerthy Suresh in a role that I think she can do justice too, and this doesn’t seem close. She looks uncomfortable in the songs and while there is some reasonable chemistry between her and Vijay it’s much like the rest of the film – pedestrian and predictable.

There are a number of other threads that seem to have been added to and appeal more to the modern market. Harish Uthaman appears as Malarvizhi’s abusive brother-in-law Prabha who has the world’s fastest rehabilitation after he gets beaten up by Bairavaa. Generally the police and judicial system are honest and the comedy is kept to a minimum with Bairavaa’s friend Shanmugam (Sathish) having only limited time onscreen. Thambi Ramaiah as Malarvizhi’s uncle Narayanan has even less time on screen, which in this instance is definitely for the best.

The songs too are disappointing and often oddly placed although Vijay’s dancing is still the highlight, but even here the energy seems subdued. At least until Papa Papa which is definitely the pick of the bunch. I can usually find something to enjoy in a Vijay film, despite the often wafer-thin plots, but I was hard pressed to find much in Bairavaa. It’s a strictly by the numbers mass film with little animation and even less ingenuity. At 169 minutes Bairavaa does feel like an endurance test and much could have been shortened (all those slow-mo fight moves and echoing repeats!) to improve the film flow. One strictly for the fans, and even then be prepared for a less than thrilling experience.