Raavanan-Ramayan or Odyssey?

We have this habit(good or bad?) of trying to watch Mani Ratnam's movies on the first day it gets released. We did better, and watched Raavanan's preview show itself. After lots of hype and hoopla, surrounding it about being the modern day Ramayan, directed probably the only director today who gets applause from the audience when his name appears on the screen, you would expect a spectacle. And he does not disappoint.

Be it the spectacular locations, or the performances of the lead actors-Vikram after a long time looking good in a role which has scope for acting( though his danda naka danda naka dialogue evoked painful memories of the kandasaamy rap!!!) Aish looking bold and beautiful, (yes...'bold' ), Prithviraj filling the shoes of Lord Ram superbly, Priya Mani, Prabhu, Karthik as usual...(though Karthik's monkey jumping scene could have been avoided!). A special mention to the photography, which is top notch. Rahman's background music is somewhat restrained, which blends well to the feel of the movie...


Bad guy kidnaps the good guy's wife, the good guy searches for his wife in the woods with a band of men, finds his wife kills the bad guy. So cliche- but again, who is the bad guy and who is the good guy? The story moves around in a very tantalising manner, with a small under current of romance blossoming between Vikram and Aish..(for those saying "ewwww" search for Stockholm syndrome in google). because thats precisely what it is, an emotion of gratitude towards the abductor.

Where the film falls is the reason behind the kidnapping- how would a wife of an SP who has no hand in the calamity that befalls his sister be held responsible? And that too, after killing the policemen responsible, he kidnaps her to kill her!(If you want to kill someone why should you abduct them in the first place?) Flimsy logic which hurts the very core of the movie- a first in Mani Ratnam's movie, but then nobody is perfect.

After firmly establishing the identities of the characters (vikram-bad and prithvi-good) the director does a complete U turn and starts projecting Vikram as the saint and Prithvi as the bad guy... which is interesting because from your own point of view, you are always a good guy- and so even after all the crimes committed by him, 20 minutes into the second half you start feeling for Vikram and his men( Aish too...) and start wondering why is Prithvi so cruel?(completely forgetting the fact that his wife has been kidnapped!!!).

There have been different versions of Ramayan, in India and in the Far East, each one different, but probably this is the first one which has dealt into Sita's emotions when Rama questions her fidelity. But again, after this point it wasnt Ramayan any more, and all that was going through my mind was Homer's Odyssey- the love, the deceit, the trap and the ending.....

Overall, not upto the usual Mani Ratnam standards, but still good, although I doubt whether it would run successfully in Hindi...

Shark!!!!

7 of us went "Beautiful Tamil son", and wept from the beginning to end, (the worst comment of the night was from one of my friends who is from Hyderabad saying telugu movies are better than this!!!!), so we took the safe route and watched "Scoundrel" through pirated DVD, (for all those Ambi vikrams, if the movie can be pirated why not the DVD???!!??) , I wanted to show off to my friend that I could book tickets through my office, and off we went to " Sparrow", which pecked us to death, and that fiasco was enough for us to skip "Bow" all together, when, the would be bridegroom who is gonna marry your cousin is calling you to watch "Hunter" with him, can you refuse? If you arent going to attend their marriage then you have to appease him in whichever way you can. So left with no option, I accompanied him to 'Hunter' and ignored everything in the movie but Anoushka(Oh...My....God!) but even after all these misses and near misses, one has to say we have this masochistic tendency to pain that we readily go on to watch movies released by Illaya Thalapathi...

And thank god the movie was named Shark! Had it been Tiger, save the tiger project would have been doomed!

Whenever people start reading a film review they are expected to read about the the story gist, the actors, the characters, the plot, the screenplay,comedy, music etc. If you are looking for all these in this blog, i suggest you stop reading now...As the old adage goes, whats in the bowl comes in the spoon! Still I try to find one good thing about the movie..and it was the Iron man-2 trailer which was shown during the interval!!!

 All the dialogues show a preview that Vijay might soon join politics, which is a very good thing, as we need politicians who can't act and he certainly fits the bill!

PS: to my friend who made me watch this movie....I would definitely get my revenge!!!