AADUKALAM- SCORING SCREENPLAY AND CHARACTERISATION

The recent trend that caught up after the success of films like Subbramaniyapuram, Paruthiveeran has been a hit with the Tamil audience as a whole. But, not many could reproduce the same magic as these two films with all audiences. Aadukalam falling in the same category of real-to life films, strikes a chord right from the initial narrations to the well-handled character portrayal. Vettrimaran needs all the accolades for his good screenplay and characterisation. Dialogues in the movie were written with mastery, but the delivery from the actors was blurred at places during the initial few scenes.
After Dhanush’s success in Pudupettai, which portrays the rise of a gangster, one would have expected a similar story after initial promos. Gang-wars, ego, revenge, and self-pride put on a single serving is not something new. But, mishandling it could be tragedy. Vettrimaran has used this formula immaculately giving the movie a strong story. The rooster-fights that appear in the movie show the improved animation techniques in the film industry, giving the movie a highlight. Another highlight is the music by G.V.Prakash, with the songs bustling in charts; but, the background scores and re-recording could have been better.
Aadukalam has a rather forgotten storyline. The first half of the movie revolves around the rooster-fight groups of the village, Pattaiyakarar(Jayabalan) and a police man whose family had been into the game for generations. Dhanush, playing Karuppu, is one of the side-lines of Pattaiyakarar. He, as usual, showcasing his versatile acting skills, elegantly merges with the set-up and makes even the stereotypical dialogues look so natural. Kishore Kumar, the other side-line of pattiyakarar, plays a cameo in the first half, but his character, Durai, is one of the key roles in the second half. Not one character exists without any significance in the whole movie.
Pattaiyakarar emerges victorious in all the games he participates, bringing in envy from the other main group. The police man, Rathnasamy, played by Naren, has his pride at stake and winning a game against Pattaiyakarar is like regaining the lost throne for his family. With rooster-fights entangled into their lives, the fight stadium is their battlefield. In between all this drama, there’s an added-in-the-right-amount love story. The heroine,Tapasee Pannu, not surprisingly shares less screen-space. Playing an Anglo-Indian, her character is also artistically depicted and well suited her. It is laudable that the love doesn’t interfere with the smooth narration. The first half ends with Karupu winning Rathnasamy in a rooster-fight tournament using a rooster that Pattiyakarar considered ineligible for a victory. Though this won Pattaiyakarar the final battle with Rathnasamy, his ego is put through test.
Unable to digest the set-back he suffered in judgement, Pattaiyakarar sets off a cold war against Karupu. Blind-folded by his patriotism towards his master, Karupu falls into the trap and suffers a series of mishap. The second half thus is an entirely different plot. The climax is a bit messed up with. Otherwise, all the characters were handled with clarity and gave us a real-to life feel.

Aadukalam-will play wonders at the box-office; can be watched once for Vettrimaran and all the good acting.

A review on ENDHIRAN- The Robot

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 :-)

Avatar- A Perfect movie to savour!

    

A Perfect Gift for Any Movie Lover

Yet again, Mr. Cameron gives us what can be termed paramount perfection, with every single frame captivating one's mind and, your heart goes out for Pandora. The protagonist, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), is a disabled former Marine who takes his late twin brother's place in an avatar program, which was assigned in hopes that the study of Pandora and its population might create a more peaceful planet. But, the truth was to steal Pandora of its resources. The movie revolves around what happens in Pandora when the military advances to complete its orders to conquer it and how Jake strives in stopping them.

Jake Sully goes to Pandora as a replacement for his brother, who dies before his training for the Avatar program, to control an Avatar, which is a biological body that mixes human DNA with that of the native population of Pandora, Na’vi. This Avatar can be controlled from the Base, more like a technology that links a human mind to a biological-robot. Since, only Juke has similar DNA patterns as his twin brother, he’s the only person left to handle his brother’s Avatar.

The planet Pandora is hostile for human beings and situated many light years from planet Earth. Our Avatars look like its ‘monkey-like inhabitants’, blue-skinned and tall. The movie kicks-off with Jake, Dr.Grace(played by Sigourney Weaver), and one of her support staff start their first Avatar journey into Pandora. Though Grace is living what she created Jake is the most excited one with the experience of jumping and running, above all feeling the freedom, which was curbed after a disaster he suffered.

Unexpectedly, they get in the way of a fierce, wild creature of the Pandora forests and Jake gets separated from his team-mates. After getting saved Jake manages to get taken in by one tribe where a powerful, Amazonian named Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) takes him under her wing to teach him how to live in the forest, speak the language and honor the traditions of nature. In his months with the Na'vi, Jake experiences their life as the "true world" and that inside his crippled body locked in a coffin-like transponding device, where he can control his avatar, is as his "destiny." He provides solid intelligence about the Na'vi defensive capabilities to the mining consortium. But as Jake comes to see things through Neytiri's eyes, he hopes to establish enough trust between the humans and the natives to negotiate a peace. But the corporation wants the land the Na'vi occupies for its valuable raw material. So the Colonel of the army, Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) sees no purpose in this. The rest of the movie is all about how the Earth’s forces are defeated and peace is restored in Pandora.

   Cameron‘s aberrant thought and a wonderfully handled cinematography that brings it out beautifully, send an awe in every audience. The 3-D magic added to mind-boggling animation finishes the ribbon giving our eyes the perfect gift.  Friends, this romantic, science fiction is worth your money, perhaps even more.