Not many movies can survive once the stakes set are high on them! It goes without saying for ENDHIRAN, the costliest movie of Asia ever, a Rajnikanth-Shankar-A.R.Rahman-Aishwarya combo, and so forth the expectations were Himalayan. This is not something new for director Shankar following a huge success of 'Sivaji' at the box-office, but a 160cr movie in Kollywood is not child's play. That's a success in itself. But, the question is that, "Is Endhiran really that worthy?".
Shankar starts off with a clear, slow screenplay introducing us to his subjects like an 8th grade teacher at a science exhibition. Now, that might not be liked by some, but it’s something very essential with a sci-fi movie script and an audience of mixed caliber together. Vaseegaran(the protagonist played by Super star Rajnikanth) is a die-hard scientist dedicated completely to his work on a dream project to create a human-like robot that can be used in wars as replacement for men. With a long wait and after been totally cut off from the outside world, he creates his dream, an artificially intelligent robot 'Chiti'.The script then speeds up and you soon find 'Chiti' (played by Rajni again) entertaining us with all his gimmicks.
Vaseegaran meets trouble in the form of antagonist Danny Denzongpa in approving the robot for the army. He on the other hand envies Dr. Vasi's success and also tries to steal his ideas to make money. As an upgradation after initial failures, Dr. Vaseegaran gives 'Chiti' emotions and human-like characters which lead to unexpected troubles and the rest of the movie is all about what Vaseegaran does to stop Chiti from all the mischief. Rajnikanth coming in as the villain in the second-half as Chiti scores of easily remembering us of the yesteryear movies like Moonru mugam... His performance is applaudable as usual. For once, over-shadowed by the director! Aishwarya Rai Bachchan mesmerizes us with her cute expressions, catchy eyes and etc, etc :-)
Guys, "don get any ideas" with this. The movie is an entertaining package, made in India. Animations done by technicians who worked on movies like the Jurassic park, makes one feel us proud for the effort put in. An Indian movie of this standard was a dream few years back, and here you have a gift from Shankar to all kollywood movie lovers! The various fictitious technologies in the movie are out-of-the-box and Shankar scores of a perfect-ten for that.
But, there were a few odd-ones out in the screenplay. Being a Rajnikanth movie, one would expect the Rajni-factor carrying the script in style. But, it was Shankar all the way, his brilliance in making a movie for all, and not losing the sci-fi flavour. He has taken the audience along with the script, and there's no one who does it better than Shankar. Not to mention the comical and cliched dialogues and scenes at places where some might lose the hold. But, those are parts of a movie for all formula.
As a whole, Endhiran-The Robot has set the stage for Kollywood movies of high standards in the future! Enjoy the movie; it’s worth your bucks :-)
