Aarambam - Thala Deepavali

There are few things that match the euphoria of an Ajith movie! It was on display in full force today as Aarambam began Diwali celebrations across Tamil Nadu in grand style. Sometimes, it is extremely difficult not to get carried away in the absolute thrill of the moment; crackers, confetti, whistles and everything that can make for an energetic celebration. But, braving all that, here is a review of Aarambam, just the movie, and none of the extraneous factors.

As the makers have said, it is an out and out commercial entertainer for the festival season. Well, yes, but it is not the regular commercial entertainer which has the five songs, five fights, the romance, the comedy and sentiment. No, this one is more about action than anything else. The makers have made this film with a clear vision – it is for those who love high octane action, thrills, some well executed heroism and star charisma in all its glory. This is not to say that this movie is one long action sequence. It has its commercial indulgences to keep all sections of the audience happy, but the director never loses control over the movie, or focus over the central plot.

Yes, there is an intro song, which goes ‘Aarambame’, that serves the purpose of an….ahem..intro song, that has no relevance to the movie whatsoever. It only serves as a warm up of sorts for the fans who want to dance in the aisles. While colorfully picturized, the song only highlights the fact that Ajith, in spite of his best efforts, has considerably slowed down when it comes to dance. But, then the director dives straight into the story. We are introduced to a hacker from Chennai (Arya) who is on his way to Mumbai and ‘accidentally meets his college buddy on the flight (Nayan). Then there is a brief flashback with Arya in a never-before-seen avatar, which you will surely enjoy. That brief interlude is the only place where the director has given some space for fun and comedy. That wrapped up, it’s back to the plot again.

The hacker finds that he has been hacked; and is now forced to do some hacking to survive. But, he doesn’t know why he is being asked to do this. Even the audience doesn’t know anything, except for the fact that the chief of the operation likes to ‘Make it simple’. Apparently, this is all well planned and there is something very big that is being schemed. But, being a hacker, he finds a way to throw a spanner in the works. The entire thing comes down with a thud. What was being planned? How was it brought down? And, how does it all come back up? Watch Aarambam to find out.

One has to appreciate the director’s vision to give an almost pure action movie, while still remaining within the constraints of the commercial format. He finds a way to induce a bit of fun and comedy with Arya’s brief episode, manages to squeeze in three songs without hurting the pace of the movie (the fourth one does), manages to avoid having a song featuring Nayanthara (which would have been a huge temptation), avoids a romantic track for Ajith and also manages to avoid the scenario of the hero beating up 50 guys at a time. These are the malaises that hurt our action movies and Vishnuvardhan has steered clear of them. Good job.

The motives behind the heists being planned are kept a secret right through the first half. You don’t even get a clue. If it was not for Ajith’s charisma and masss appeal, this kind of a character would have looked like a complete villain. The second half continues in the fast action vein, but deviates for a flashback to explain the motives. A crisply done affair, which perhaps gets a bit too dramatic towards its end! Here again, the director shows very good control over the proceedings, never letting boredom creep in. However, all the good work is marred a bit in the final 20 minutes when the thirst for grandeur seems to have overtaken a sensible script. You have highly wanted criminals flying across continents unchecked (as if the police was busy twiddling thumbs) without so much as a disguise or a fake passport. You have an artificially inserted bike ride (there is no rule that Ajith has to ride a bike for a movie to be complete), followed by an extremely bizarre sequence at the Indo-Pak LOC which defies all common sense and logic. Oh man, never knew it was so easy to conduct business on an international border. And finally, a sermon on corruption and keeping the system clean, which reminds us of the ‘bulletproof jack scam’ from 2008 to the ‘coffin scandal’ of the Kargil war. OK, we got the message.

Ajith is in top form in Aarambam. He exudes attitude and his fans will love it; it was evident in the theater today. Arya plays perfect foil. Nayanthara is restrained, as is required by her role and Tapsee plays a girl who is slightly better than being a dumb bimbette and says ‘Sooo sweeeet’ for everything. And, she looks funny speaking Tamil. Mahesh Manjrekar is superb as a cold calculating politician and the same can be said of Atul Kulkarni who comes out excellently as a corrupt officer. Kishore looks every bit stiff and serious as a cop must and Rana Daggubatti looks very macho in his brief appearance.

But, this movie is about Ajith; so, let’s talk about him. Stylish, suave, cool – he is everything that the role demands, except when he dances. Yuvan Shankar Raja has composed an absolute dream of a theme music which multiplies Ajith’s mass appeal in every one of those scenes that is meant to make the audience go into raptures. The BGM crackles, rumbles, roars and electrifies, Yuvan has rocked. You will enjoy this movie just on the strength of Thala’s screen presence.

In all other technical aspects, one can only say that no expense has been spared. It is a top notch product. Shot in the best possible locations, thrilling action, ensemble star cast, and a good story to go with it – Aarambam is a definite festival treat. Of course, it is not the five course meal that a commercial entertainer is meant to be (comedy, romance, music, action, sentiment), but whatever it serves (action), it serves well. If only Vishnuvardhan would have shown a bit more restraint in the climax, it would have looked like a very intelligent movie. But, here, we get a ham-handed climax which makes us lose a bit of the elation we had all along.  No problem, we’ll overlook that. One more thing, this ‘hero fighting terrorists in Mumbai’ theme might have just gone past its shelf life. So, anyone else with similar ideas please rethink you strategy. Till then, have a great Aarambam to this Diwali.

Aarambam – Thala in form; a good start to the Diwali celebrations.

Escape Plan - Rocky and Terminator come together!

Do you need any more incentive to get into a theater other than the fact that Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger are in it together. Well, if you have seen Expendables 2, then you might be a bit apprehensive because you know that such star-stuffed spectacles can be a bit of a drag after the initial excitement wears out. And, these two men are past their sell-by date, working hard to push the limits. So, can it work, at least 20 years past their prime?

It is a highly imaginative and improbable plot; that is expected in such a movie. Syl is Ray Breslin, a

man with the most bizarre of job descriptions – he checks the quality of prisons. We are given a glimpse of his expertise in the beginning, a low-key affair, no big action, but a look at his tactical acumen in breaking out of prisons. Then comes the real deal, the toughest assignment that he has been offered as yet. This time his clients want to dictate terms. His gut tells him something’s wrong, but the challenge tempts him.

As the trailers would have told you, ‘the most secure prison ever built’, and the man is bang in the middle of it, the middle of nowhere. He wants to get out, but its not as easy as it looks. He needs an ally, and guess who he finds on the ship – ‘he’s back’.

First, the good thing about Escape Plan is that it does not get carried away by the casting coup it has managed. The focus is definitely on the plot and not on the stars. You realize that around 30 minutes into the movie and heave a sigh of relief that the same mistakes of the Expendables are not being repeated. They work to a definite plan, and though you know who’s going to win in the end, you are not quite sure how. And, a big surprise awaits you around the mid point, concerning the location of the prison, and no one will see it coming. In hindsight, it does look a bit too implausible, but we can overlook that. The plan is not ingenuous, but it is not plain dumb action either. All said and done, a bit more of effort in the script could have made this a much more enjoyable experience.

Talking about the leading men, Sylvester and Arnold. Well, time has had its effects on them. They

definitely have slowed down, Arnold more so. But, they still have the attitude that made them global stars in the 80s, and you can sit back and enjoy when they turn it on once in a while. They work well together, match each other. They share the screen a lot of the time and have done well to cover their stardom and get into the characters

It is definitely more Sylvester’s movie than Arnold’s, but the Terminator does have a couple of scenes reserved at the end; if you are a fan, you will definitely enjoy it when he picks up the machine gun, and there is also a wicked ‘say cheese’ moment, Arnold really rocks in that moment. Sylvester doesn’t have that tailor-made moments for himself, but he is the main protagonist and brain, and he sure doesn’t look 66. As it is said in Rocky Balboa, ‘the last thing to leave a man is his punch’.

Escape Plan does try to overawe you with the immense nature of its setting, but sorry, we have seen bigger things and it does not quite have that effect on us. There’s nothing much to say here, just that, you don’t have to be afraid that this is just another version of the Expendables. This is not all hollow shooting and punching, it has got some stuff, although not a whole lot of it. If you are a fan of Rocky or Terminator, you will walk away with a smile. Yes, the script could have done with a bit more work, but no use complaining now.

And, in the theater, at the end of the movie, someone suggested that this is the cheesy version o

f Shawshank Redemption. No way, Shawshank Redemption is one of the greatest jailbreak movies ever made, Escape Plan is not even in that league, a comparison is sacrilege. This is just a happy Saturday outing for all fans who don’t mind seeing the old men flexing their muscles once again.  One is just left wondering, that if this duo can be fun even 66 and 67, what it would have been like if they had come together in their pomp.

Captain Phillips: A tense drama in the middle of the ocean

It’s been a while. This had to come. An actor like Tom Hanks could not be kept away from good movies for too long. For all those who love to see Tom Hanks on screen, Captain Phillips comes as a relief. The last few movies of the actor have been pale shadows of the kind of quality he once used to be involved in. Captain Phillips sets the record straight. Yes, against the normal graph of a movie review, I would like to announce at the very start that Captain Phillips is a must watch for every Tom Hanks fan, and also will be a very engaging experience even for someone who is not as much a fan of Hanks.

Set in the sea around the ‘Horn of Africa’, some distance from the Somali coastline, the movie retells

the real-life ordeal of the captain of an American cargo vessel which gets hijacked by Somalian pirates. We are given a brief look at the Captain’s family, presumably to emotionally anchor us to the character. But, that five-minute passage later, it is all about the ship and the captain’s adventure.

This is not a thriller in the strictest sense of the word. We can call this more a tense hijack-hostage drama where guns are always drawn, tempers are ready to flare and life is literally on a knife’s edge. There is not much high-adrenaline action, most of it is slow paced. The director has kept things slow to maintain the realistic feel of action at sea. The pirate boats chasing the cargo vessel is one such example – no high flying stunts, but one meaningful and tactical pursuit, which is countered equally tactically by the crew of the vessel. It is not the speed of the action per se, but the strategic nature of the moves that keeps you interested, which is why it is important to keep a sharp ear on the Captain’s orders all the time.

The real surprise in the movie comes when the hijack drama suddenly turns into something else. You were gearing yourself for some action aboard the ship, but the suddenly, the ship goes out of the picture, and in one shocking twist, the scene of action shifts to a lifeboat. That segment will surely be a surprise to all those who have not heard about the real events that happened in 2009. From then on, it is an even more tense drama, with a lot of eyeball-eyeball moments, where it is a question of who is able to hold their nerve longer, who is able to keep their wits about them in a life-or-death situation.

The situation heats up with the arrival of the US Navy into the picture. Here again, the director has

refrained from any attempts at going for out-and out action. He maintains the tactical nature of the operation, focusing more on the strategies used by the Navy to confuse, break and outthink the pirates. The precision nature of the operation is highlighted at the very end, where a 48-hour drama ends with three clinical strikes. No unnecessary bravado, no thumping background music, no slow motions, absolutely no dramatics, just a clinical finish. Its all over before you know. You must be prepared to enjoy the tactical precision of the operation rather than expect the regular kind of action.

The best part about the movie’s casting is the Somalian pirates. They look every bit real, remorseless and rugged pirates. The leader of the pack exudes a wicked attitude as if he has the nerve to stand up to anyone and ask them to ‘**** off’. Even better is the way the deterioration of his nerve and command over the crew is portrayed over the two days at sea. The other pirates, each one very different from the other, have been well chosen. Its not a homogenous bunch of gun-wielding baddies, each one has an individuality, which makes the moments in the life boat tenser. Also, limiting their English dialogues, making them speak in their local language (with English subtitles) lends a lot of credibility to the characters.

Technically, the movie does boast of a large canvas, the ocean, and an equally small stage, the lifeboat.

The vast expanse of the ocean is a pleasant relief from the claustrophobic interiors of the life boat, which has been well elicited by the camera. Although a movie involving at least four ships, Captain Phillips does not waste much time on gaping at their size, beauty and mobility, this is not that kind of a movie. Neither does the movie use the sea as an element in the story, no rough weather or storms or icebergs – the kind of things we are used to seeing in movies that have ships out at sea. It is only about the characters and the situation they are thrown into together. The initial portions of the movie have a very unsteady cam, always bobbing and weaving, perhaps to give the viewer a feeling of how a vessel feels when at sea. The economy of sound is another thing that gives proceedings a very real feel.

Finally, about Tom Hanks. It’s great to see him in a really good movie after quite a while. But, someone said something about an Oscar, which feels like an overstatement. Yes, he has done a good job, but the role really doesn’t demand much off him. The only time when he really tugs at your heart is when he finally breaks down during the medical examination, that scene does show his call; but Oscar, don’t think so. Watch Captain Phillips for a tense drama. Not much action here, but definitely gripping. The outcome is not too unpredictable, but the methods are. This one will definitely not leave you disappointed unless your definition of action is a lot of bullets, bombs, explosions and jumps off cliffs.

One more word – the movie is more about the rescue operation than Captain Phillips. Couldn’t the makers have found a better title, or did they just want to show that Tom Hanks has a central role?

GRAVITY - Experience freefall!

We have had films set in fantasy lands, faraway islands, dreamworlds, heaven, hell and beyond. We have had films set in planets that are millions of light years away from earth, we have had battleships in space. But, in spite of all that, we have never had a film that is set a few hundred kilometers directly above earth. Just man and space! Gravity is unique for just the fact that it explores this ‘space’ through which many of our movies have traversed, but never dared to dwell on in any great detail.

Gravity gives us a very palpable feeling of the fact that the serene, quite and

absolutely vast expanse called space is the most hostile environment for life. It’s a place where you can’t breath, you can’t talk, you can’t walk and neither can you fall. It is an infinity of nothingness. The only thing that you can love about space is the view that it offers, priceless. Captain Kowalsky (George Clooney) says so as he floats around the space station. You get the feeling that this zero gravity has had an effect on the guy’s brain. He never stops talking, mostly about girls and cars. Then you realize he’s a veteran of these sojourns who’s taking another walk in the park. But, Dr. Ryan (Sandra Bullock) is not so chilled out. Its her first time up there and needs Kowalsky’s prompting to notice the stunning view of earth. And then, things go wrong, horribly wrong. When something goes wrong in space, its not like on earth, where you fall down, get back up and walk. Up there, you don’t fall down on anything, you fall away into infinity. Nothing stops you, nothing holds you, nothing breaks your bones or your fall, you drift. You have pushed off your perch, your spacecraft has been damaged and you are falling away. Do you stand a chance?

The best thing about Gravity is that it doesn’t show, but makes you feel how helpless man is when he is left to his own devices in space. You spin, you rotate, you revolve, but you don’t stabilize. You feel the way your head might spin when left in space. A lot of the time, after the mishap that is, the camera gives you a viewpoint perspective as the castaways in space spin and turn at the mercy of zero gravity. The camera spins along and your head might spin along too. The action is slow, but riveting, as they try to regain their balance, try to latch on to something that will stabilize them. You feel the excitement because it is a matter of millimeters and there is no second chance. You miss it and you are lost in space forever. There are no enemies, no bullets, no strong winds, no water, nothing that can hurt you – it is the nothingness that can consume you. The team has done a wonderful job of getting that feeling into you. It’s a feeling that no other movie has been able to put into you.

The good things about Gravity are that it keeps the action in space real. There is

no artificial attempt to step up the pace to make things more exciting. The view and backdrop are unadulterated, the black expanse of space and the blue ball of earth. There is no background story, no build up to the space expedition, no big mission of saving the earth from aliens or asteroids. Its pure, astronauts stranded in space. It’s a relief that we don’t have to sit through flashing images of the people’s lives on earth. It is this unidirectional purpose of the film that sets it apart from all the outer space movies we have seen.

Are actors important in this kind of a movie? Well, to be fair, the movie is one big special effect. It belongs to the director and the team that brought the splendid visual backdrop alive all throughout the movie. But, there are moments where actors are needed and they prove their worth. In what is a very tense 90 minutes, George Clooney brings on his wit and charm with ease, it is like oxygen in the vacuum of space. You get the feeling that only Clooney could have done this. Sandra Bullock plays the anxious first timer quite well, handling all the action, the tumbling and turning. The actors are the reason you feel any emotional connection to this movie that is set entirely in space.

The 3D, well, one doesn’t really feel it in many places. The sound design, however, has been done extremely well. The challenge here is to mix sounds with silence, to remind us how silent space can be, and at the same time to stop any monotony from setting in. The balance has been struck perfectly. There are a couple of occasions when you feel that something has been sucked out of your ears; you

need to be watching the film in a good theater to experience these effects. Technically, Gravity is a piece of work that needs to be applauded for sheer perection in execution.

Gravity makes you experience what space might be like. It is the closest thing to space that you will see in a cinema hall. It is not a thrilling roller coaster ride, or adrenaline pumping time, but is an experience that is quite unique. The unadulterated portrayal of a space sojourn is the best thing about Gravity. I wouldn’t say ‘go and watch it’, I would, however, say ‘go and experience it’.

Mysskin: Unique, Quirky, Inscrutable!

Reasons to watch Onaaiyum Aattukkuttiyum!

Mysskin has a way of blurring borders that divide the good from the bad. We don’t know what he personally feels, but his films seem to suggest that not all bad people are bad by choice; many are so because they don’t have another choice. He suggests that there is good hidden behind the dark veil of bad, as also there is a shade of grey behind every white layer. There are no absolutely good or bad people, just human beings who are pawns at the hand of destiny. This is what Mysskin’s philosophy might look like, just guessing!

What leads to such a guess? Onaakiyum Aattukkuttiyum, and a few other movies that he has made. He takes a paid professional killer and almost makes him look like a savior in OA. The kind of character that would have evoked no sympathies in the hands of another director becomes the object of sympathy in the hands of Mysskin. He makes the audience look beyond the dark veneer of the paid killer. When the movie starts, the audience wants Wolf to be killed. But, in the end, when he almost shoots himself, the audience hopes that he had lived. Mysskin knows the emotional buttons to be pressed to make a bad man look good. He blurs the line between good and bad.

Its not just OA that proves this. Look at his other movies too. He gives a touch of pathos to the death of almost each of his antagonists. Of course, there are characters that he completely paints in black – like Naren in Mugamoodi, or the gang of middle-aged perverts from Yudham Sei, or Prasanna in Anjathe, or Thamba in OA. But, a lot of his characters are in gray and their death is shown with as much emotion as the death of a protagonist. Anjaathe is a classy example of this tendency of Mysskin. The way he shows Naren and Ajmal as the bad and the good, respectively, at the beginning, flips sides midway and then gives a poignant end to Ajmal’s character, stretching the scene a second longer to let us see that he realized that he was wrong. That second changes our perception of the character, making us think that it was just a misunderstanding that led to him being what he was.

Cinema mostly doesn’t care much about the background of its antagonists. When a bad guy dies, very few film makers dwell on the family he leaves behind. Mysskin is one among the few who does that. Recall the corrupt police officer who is shot dead close to the climax of Yudhdham Sei. The camera stays on him for a second longer than it would in a normal Tamil movie, just to show us his mobile phone ringing; his daughter is calling. Mysskin takes that moment to show us the human being inside a criminal.

These are small things, but very unique. When we want to make something look whiter than it actually is, we can paint the surroundings black. The contrast gives us the desired effect. Cinema works this way to make its protagonist seem like a hero. Mysskin, one thinks, doesn’t like using too much of black or white, he deals in gray. The closing scene of OA is a good example – Wolf, the bad guy to start with, is lying dead with our sympathies, while the police men (the heroes to start with) are standing there, heads hanging (in shame, or relief, or a feeling of nothingness – we don’t know) Even the young man, who risked a lot to save a life at the start of the film, doesn’t hesitate to shoot down a person by the end. Mysskin deals in such extremes with ease.

Most of his films can be boxed into these basic philosophies – about good not being altogether good, about bad not being altogether bad, about everyone having a bit of both in them. It just takes the right or wrong situation to bring out the good or bad in us.

But, it is not just these unique philosophies that are common to Mysskin films. There are some very interesting quirks as well. No, we are not discussing the ‘yellow saree’ anymore. You wonder where he developed those fascinations; like the one he has for dark. Dark seems to be his constant companion. One thought that there can’t be more ‘dark’ shots than he had in Yudhdham Sei, but OA did it.

Also, he almost always has a character who is differently abled; no matter how small the role. Kuruvi from Anjathe, the hunchback in Mugamoodi, the blind family in OA. So many occurrences cannot be seen as mere coincidence; it has to be deliberate, for reasons only the director will know.

He definitely has a fascination about men who can single handedly make an entire police force look helpless. Go all the way back to Anjaathe; he had the entire city’s police force going after the gang in the climax. Yudham Sei had a similar situation. Mugamoodi took it to another level where all of Tamil Nadu’s police force was clueless in a hostage situation. Now in OA, we have all of Chennai’s police officers being led on a merry hunt by the Wolf. Mysskin certainly gets excited at the thought of one man toying with the authorities.

But, the most surprising, perhaps even confounding, tendency that Mysskin has shown throughout his film making career is that of the ‘staged fight sequence’. For a film maker who avoids the so called commercial trappings in all other departments, his fights look strangely choreographed. It started with Anjaathe: five men wearing sacks as masks, attacking a police officer one by one. It was new then. But, when it repeated in Yudham Sei, we had a feeling of déjà vu. Why is he repeating himself, many thought? Now, in OA, he has two Ninja warriors, wearing war paint, carrying swords, waiting for their opponent to unzip his jacket, tie the girl behind his back and adjust his sleeves before they attack him. It crosses the line of realism and commercialism, goes into surrealism. In a movie where guns talk more than men, why are there two Ninja warriors with swords. Even if there are, why do they have to wait for their opponent to arrange himself – this is not a kung fu tournament, they want to kill him. Surely, a film maker with the sensibilities of Mysskin knows that this might look odd, but he persists with this style – for reasons that only he knows.

All said and done, Mysskin is a film maker who has a style that makes us sit up and take notice. He thrills and makes us think, he might even make us weep. But, there are some things about his style that are very difficult to understand. There’s only one thing we can say for sure, he is unique and he is one of his kind in Tamil cinema. Watch Onaaiyum Aattukuttiyum if you are not convinced about this. Even if you are not convinced, you will enjoy the movie.