Shankar's "I" (Tamil) - A review

After reading some rave reviews written about the movie, I too felt an urge to watch Shankar's I. He had impressed me with "Robot" that starred Rajnikanth and came in 2010. I was also heard a lot about Vikram's acting prowess and so was eager to see him act, this was going to be my first Vikram movie, so I was surely enthusiastic about it. He didn't disappoint me either, I thought apart from the superb VFX effects and some breath-taking action sequences, it was Vikram's enthralling performance as the disfigured hunchback that kept me interested in the movie. He gave the role his all. Otherwise the plotline was very poorly written. They had a beautiful love story built up but I think the script went haywire by the interval. And the revenge part too didn't look that convincing. The characters were too poorly sketched to have any impact. Moreover so poor was their acting that none of the antagonists could hold the viewer's attention. I also felt the chemistry between Vikram and Amy to be quite cold.

The story is about a countryside body-builder Lingesan (played by Vikram) who aspires to be the next Mr. India by winning the body-building championship and so he duly prepares for the competition. He is also obsessed with a model named Diya (played by Amy Jackson). Meanwhile Diya (Amy Jackson) is constantly harassed by her fellow colleague John (played by Upen Patel) with whom she shares a lucrative modelling assignment. So to resist his advances she approaches Lingesan to act in an ad film with her and he reluctantly agrees because he has to forego his dream of participating in the Mr. India championship that year. For the ad shoot, both of them leave for China. To make the ad work, Diya pretends to have fallen in love with Lingesan so that he would let go of his inhibitions and there would be a natural chemistry between them. He also undergoes a complete makeover for the ad film and while shooting, the two fall in love. The ad film too gets successful and the brand climbs up the ladder.

Thus Lingesan earns the ire of five enemies - a fellow contestant from the body-building competition whom he had defeated, the reigning supermodel John who loses all his ad contracts to Lingesan, a gay make-up artiste whose advances Lingesan rejects, the brand owner whose next ad campaign Lingesan refuses to act in and so also his doctor friend who had all the while been eyeing to marry Diya. So they all team up and get the doctor to inject Lingesan with an I virus to terribly deform him. Thereafter it gets all yawningly predictable. How Lingesan avenges his deformation and wins back his love is what follows.

Read More

Tevar - A review

First things first, though Tevar had all ingredients needed for a masala entertainer but this script has been done to death so many times in Bollywood before that there is nothing new to offer. The movie would have probably worked if it had come in the early 2000s. I wonder why would a debutant director trying to make his way into the top league in Bollywood, want to take up a subject that is as old as some 10 years or so? Tevar is a remake of the Telugu hit movie Okkadu that came way back in 2003. Thus the plot is outdated, and so the almost three hours long movie gets really boring post interval. Unnecessary and inconsequential songs only stretch the movie even further. The movie left me terribly disappointed, as much by the plotline as by the leading actors Arjun Kapoor and Sonakshi Sinha. This movie required a persona of a star like Salman to carry off the style which Arjun Kapoor still lacks, he is too young and new in his career to be able to create that image, so fails badly though he tries hard at it. Probably he is trying too hard to shed his image of a chocolate boy hero and instead to transit to an action hero. Sonakshi Sinha on the other hand yet again plays an inconsequential role. I have lost count of such roles that she has been playing in the recent times. I wonder why she keeps choosing such scripts while she is still trying to find her feet in Bollywood.

The story is set in Agra and neighbouring Mathura and revolves around a young boy named Pintu Shukla (played by Arjun Kapoor) who does nothing but playing kabaddi (but he is surely well-known in the city for his kabaddi skills). His father (played by Raj Babbar) happens to a senior Police officer, the SP and keeps warning him not to get involved in any trouble whatsoever or else he would put him behind bars someday but Pintu can't help himself from getting into something or the other. It so happens that oneday while he had gone to Mathura with his friends to attend a marriage, he bumps into Radhika (Sonakshi Sinha) who was being dragged away by a goon, Bahubali Gajender Singh (Manoj Bajpayee), from the bus stop, because she was trying to flee to Delhi from where she could have left for the US. Bahubali Gajender Singh had fallen heads over heels for Radhika and wanted to marry her. Radhika wasn't interested and when her brother, who happened to be a newsreporter tried to warn Gajender to stay away from her, he gets killed instead. Seeing Radhika in trouble, Pintu, without knowing who Gajender actually was, beats him up and thus gets chased by his men. The movie is all about what follows next but then isn't it along the predictable lines, that we have already seen so many times before?

Speaking of performances, only the two seasoned actors, Manoj Bajpayee and Raj Babbar manage to hold your attention. It's only because of their acting that the movie is somewhat "jhellable". Manoj Bajpayee once again plays the role of a baddie, that of a rustic goon to perfection and comes up with a flawless performance. You would sit up on your seat with attention every time he comes on screen. His terrific dialogue delivery and mannerisms of a UP waley bhaiya deserves to be seen. Raj Babbar too delivers a class act. But because of a stale script and the weak plotline their performances go waste. By the time the movie draws to an end, we already know what’s going to happen. The music by Sajid - Wajid and Imran Khan is also mediocre. The only noteworthy song I found somewhat worth listening was "Superman, Salman Ka Fan". All other songs felt very thanda. So the movie can surely be given a miss.

Read More