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This entry was posted on July 31, 2012 at 10:27 AM and is filed under the ugly. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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SATYAMSHOT
July 31, 2012 at 10:41 AM
Much as I enjoy Vikram (and I will see this, of course) this isn’t exactly anything particularly new in any sense. The terrorism angle seems played out and closer to something Kamal already looks to be attempting in Vishwaroopam.
Really wish Ratnam’s association with Vikram had extended beyond Raavanan. Think it would have been mutually fruitful, particularly for Vikram who needs exactly the Ratnam type of filmmaker at this point because he’s circling the block with these textbook actioners.
Still, I’ll see this at some point even if I’m much more interested in his Shankar project.
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July 31, 2012 at 11:13 AM
yeah I agree. The odd thing is that Vikram after Anniyan clearly felt (and I think rightly so) that he had done everything he needed to within a masala format. In a very compressed period of time he did everything and of course had enormous success. But since his couple of years or so of semi-retirement he’s made a series of tentative decisions. Either very half-hearted masala (Rajapattai was totally flat and frankly bad.. with the second half being more tolerable) or this sort of more streamlined thriller narrative reminiscent perhaps of Samurai (a film which interesting at the time didn’t do too well when everything else he starred in was hitting it out of the park). He’s also tried to return to his roots with Deivathirumagan which did well enough but seemed a bit too ‘by the numbers’ for this genre. Raavanan of course did reasonably well too. But the more mystifying decisions have really come by way of masala. Here Kandasamy as an Anniyan followup was understandable as it at least had some sense of scale. But some of these other efforts don’t quite seem to be consonant with his more epic resonance and seem to be the sort of stuff that any number of stars handle quite well. On that note I didn’t mind Bheema barring the somewhat bizarre end. But again what’s mystifying is that he isn’t doing something like Dhool or Saamy. It cannot be that hard to put together something like this! During this period there have also been a couple of projects at least that were talked about or announced but didn’t take of. At times he’s hinted at a new wave direction but again nothing materialized. So post-Anniyan that tentativeness really continues. At one level I admire this sense he has where he sees no great growth as a star-actor to keep doing Dhool again and again but I fear that he has not been able to find the right balance too far. Barring Raavan and Kandasamy (for me) no other film of his since Anniyan has really satisfied me as a fan. This current film even if well done won’t really completely please the true-blue Vikram fans who want that masala admixture and more specifically the roguish persona and humor he brought to those older films. But to reiterate at one point Vikram saw that he was on a Rajni-like path of repetition and he decided he didn’t want to be that. Something remarkable about this. The one film where I deeply regret the absence of Vikram every time I think about it is Naan Kadavul. An extraordinary film in very many ways but with Vikram it would have been one for the ages.
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July 31, 2012 at 12:33 PM
I have to admit I don’t quite lament Vikram’s plight as much as Madhavan’s these days. Think the latter is a better pure actor and deserved a better set of options. He continues to be neglected in some ways. Of course, in trying to straddle Hindi and Tamil cinema he seems to have become rather irrelevant to both industries. But his decline has to do with more than this compromise. Chiefly I think one of the sadder consequences of Ratnam’s otherwise fruitful fascination with Abhishek was the loss of Madhavan as protagonist in some of his films. That director-actor collaboration deserved more of a shelf life. And I think Madhavan’s loss here impacted some of his “meaning” in Tamil cinema, especially with the emergence of guys like Vikram and Surya.
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July 31, 2012 at 12:49 PM
agreed on Madhavan.. I gave up on him a long time back. It’s true that he ran into some problems relatively early but between not being able to decide whether he was going to be a Tamil star or a Hindi one and not taking advantage of the new wave he really fell between two stools in every which way. For that matter even Surya (though I consider him far less talented than Maddy) has become really not much more than the sum of his Singam-like outings punctuated at times by a tear-jerker here and there where he experiments with his look Kamalahasan-like and gets a measure of success. In this sense it is odd that both he and Maddy who could have done a great deal with this newer Tamil cinema were not able to profit from it. Vikram at least is too much star to be wholly convincing downsizing himself that way. Maddy has mishandled his career, Surya has decided that masala is the only real game around.
In some ways the star system has been challenged even in Tamil cinema. A number of newcomers or relatively fresh stars seem to land big initials in the right kind of project. Similarly there are hot shot directors who get the same initials irrespective of stars. The Tamil new wave also favors non-stars for the most part. It’s really a split where if you’re a major star you do masala or else there are the non-stars of those other films. Relatively new stars can still get these roles for a film or two but eventually the industry moves on to another fresh or unknown face! It’s fascinating to observe how the Tamil ghettoization doesn’t favor stars beyond a point or at least keeps them locked up with the pursuit of low-hanging masala fruit! Bombay meanwhile is almost completely about genealogy. 99% of the time you can’t get anywhere serious irrespective of how important your debut is unless you have the right genes!
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July 31, 2012 at 1:02 PM
Oh Madhavan’s way better than Surya for sure. The difference with Surya though and the reason he’s been able to succeed far more is, yes he’s working the masala angle, but he’s also associating himself with directors that do matter in Tamil cinema–he’s pretty much Murugadoss’ go-to guy and he’s also got someone like Gautam Menon as a semi-regular collaborator, along with Bala who of course is sort of a foundational director for the Tamil new wave. You’re right that by and large the directors at the fore of this movement aren’t really interested in stars though. At least not always.
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July 31, 2012 at 1:03 PM
true.. on Surya’s choices.. ultimately one does have to be smart in this game and one might find Surya’s choices disappointing but they’re certainly not foolish ones.
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July 31, 2012 at 11:13 AM
thanks Shetty for putting this up..
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August 1, 2012 at 12:27 PM
Not only is this blah, but a poorly edited trailer too….
Great discussion guys…
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