There are 2 pos­si­ble crowds watch­ing this movie– one which has watched the Hindi movie ‘A Wednes­day’ and the other one have no idea about the Hindi film and watch­ing this Tamil version.I belong to the first type. Raa­jka­mal films has pro­duced this kind of song­less police story long back in 1987. So what’s new ?

I bet­ter don’t waste lines, describ­ing about the story. I strictly don’t want to com­pare these 2 films[ though it is apple to apple ]. What­ever it is, the screen pres­ence of Kamal makes a greater impact than any­one else. Kamal does a jus­ti­fied role of his age and expe­ri­ence. He avoids the looks of Naseerud­din shah but not his body lan­guage. Kamal’s biggest asset is his voice — his into­na­tion is a big plus as he has a rel­a­tively small role in story like this.

I was slightly wor­ried about Lal but Lal has done a neat por­trayal of his role with his Malay­alam accent — of course, they didn’t try to hide it. His per­son­al­ity jus­ti­fies the role along with his body lan­guage. The other char­ac­ters are done by Ganesh Venka­tram, Bharath Reddy, Lak­shmi and oth­ers [ because every­body else comes as just ‘oth­ers’ ]. Inter­est­ingly, the Tamil­nadu CM’s voice is also mimed in this film. [ The trivia is TN CM stays very next to a tem­ple near his Gopala­pu­ram res­i­dence — inter­est­ingly it is ‘Gopalaswamy’ tem­ple :) ]. The plot is slightly alien to Tamil fans [ some Eng­lish dia­logues too ] as the bomb blasts are not a close inci­dent as it was to Mumbaikars.

The good thing is that they haven’t used songs in this film too. Shruthi Hasan has done an aver­age job in her area. I couldn’t find a great scope for dash­ing BGM [ like Vet­taiyadu Vel­layadu ] in this film. Instead of intro­duc­ing Shruthi with a music album, she has a got a film to get her debut. [ Still Nilai varu­maa is a nice song ]. The red cam­era work is as usual an adver­tis­ing gim­mick to add. Those who fol­low jour­nals can under­stand these kind of hypes or fights [ why some­body can;t file a case dur­ing the shoot­ing itself instead of just before the release date ? ]. If you are able to keep the Hindi orig­i­nal aside, it’s a fan­tas­tic effort [ with­out songs, fights, com­edy track ]. Tamil ver­sion has some jumps with miss­ing flow and gives less impor­tance to the other characters.

Com­ing to the busi­ness side of the movie.. Why Kamal would want to do this film that too along with Mohan lal whereas the same could have been done with Prakas­raj as the com­mon man and Nasser as the com­mis­sioner — think about the saleabil­ity then. That’s the idea.. but it’s a bril­liant busi­ness idea. The same rea­son why Mani­rath­nam has used Abhishek Bachan and Aish­warya for the story of Ambani — GURU [ inter­na­tional sales ! ]. The film could ve been sold well in Ker­ala along with Lalet­tan and simi­larly in Tel­ugu along with Venkatesh.I am not sure about the role of the direc­tor Sakri in this lion’s feast. [ Innoru San­thanab­harathi ! ]. For the com­par­i­son game, I vote the Hindi ver­sion. [ couldn’t resist this line ! ].

What­ever it is

- Tamil cin­ema def­i­nitely needs this kind of film.

- For the best and orig­i­nal effect, watch ‘A Wednes­day’. Naseer Bhai and Neeraj Pandey deserve the best accolo­daes for their roles.

:)

Toto.

Related Posts B

1. Aayi­rathil Oruvan
2. Reel rewind — Clas­sics — Mul­lum Malarum
3. Ellam Inba Mayam
4. Andha Naall
5. Then­merku Paru­vakaa­tru — Not a review.