7am [S]arivu

 “The impact of a movie is known by how it is told to audi­ence” — Theodore Baskaran.
 
Rein­car­na­tion or rebirth is an off­beat topic in Tamil films and accord­ing to the con­ve­nience / knowl­edge level / bud­get, the movies were made in the past. To add, as per the sen­ti­men­tal view in Tamil cin­ema, rebirth sto­ries were not suc­cess­ful except a very few. The inter­est­ing mar­ket­ing aspect of this film is Bod­hid­harma, a Bud­dhist monk [ wikied very much since the sen­sa­tion started ]. With a life sized hype and top tech­ni­cians, they have made this film with­out any basic research.
 
 The very first inci­dent I heard about this movie goes like this. Muru­ga­dos told in an inter­view that he called Surya one fine morn­ing to come to YMCA ground and do a gym­nas­tic som­er­sault. Surya with­out ques­tion­ing started prac­tic­ing that som­er­sault and Muru­ga­dos said that was needed for his new movie ! He was proud that Surya never ques­tions him and does what he was told. Surya’s trou­ble started there.
 
 

 Story
 
 This starts with a 15 min doc­u­men­tary on Dhamo [  Bod­hid­harma ] in the past and then story [ rather cam­era ! ] comes to the present. China plans a bio-war on India [ Oper­a­tion red giant :) ] and sends a sin­gle per­son [ yes ! ] to India to do so as well as to kill Sruthi. In India, Sruthi a bio-technology stu­dent who deals with Bio-genetics loves the bio-acrobat Arvind [ acro­bat in Bom­bay cir­cus ] and the love has a dif­fer­ent direction.The bio-challenge starts and Sruthi escapes from the Chi­nese killer [ Viet­namese actor in real ].They run, plan, check maps, eat sandwiches, hide and seek ..  Rest is the cli­max. [ Did I tell the story ?! ]

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 The team is very clever to get the right pro­ducer, tech­ni­cal crew, artists and a timely release but mis­er­ably failed in script, music and the over­all crisp­ness. Remem­ber the movie was already sold & made it’s busi­ness more than expected;  it’s not going to affect any of the tech­ni­cians, artists and the pro­ducer. Let us take the good ones first.
 
 I liked the plot and the first 15 mins of the movie. I rec­ol­lected the glo­ri­ous shots from ‘The painted veil’ a poetic film, in the ini­tial scenes and those scenes rein­stated the pres­ence [ only there ] of Ravi K Chan­dran. The vil­lain and his new tech­nique of attack­ing his oppo­nents were catchy. Since he is new, it cer­tainly cre­ates a curios­ity of what he is going to do. His cos­tumes are awe­some and his screen pres­ence too. Sruthi Has­san — a con­fi­dent [ remem­ber only con­fi­dent :) ] hero­ine who got some equal role to a hero. In fact, Surya lis­tens to Sruthi mostly. The pic­tur­i­sa­tion of Emma emma and Mun andhi saalai were good. Surya — as usual he did his home­work duly for his role in Dhamu but not in Arvind — he mostly blinks and relied just on his tem­po­rary 6 packs. I remem­ber read­ing about his gym­nas­tic skills in his early days and I was won­der­ing what he was going to do with that when he was act­ing in Vikra­man films. It helped here in this film to show gim­micks but not fully. The silent vil­lain resem­bles ter­mi­na­tor, no coun­try for old men and remains silent. Also, few touches of the direc­tor to show things sub­tly — Mysskin like shots .. show­ing the legs in the bridge to con­vey what has hap­pened to the pro­fes­sor. Dia­logues which states the back­ground of Sruthi.

The cre­ator mis­un­der­stood sci­ence to con­vey things in high tech. In fact, Ragava lawrence reached peo­ple more eas­ily just by the logic of Sarathku­mar blood get­ting  phys­i­cal con­tact with Ragava and he becomes Sarath. How sim­ple life is ! Instead of strug­gling with bio genet­ics, tech­nol­ogy lab, record note, viva  and exter­nal marks. Tamil cin­ema misses Sujatha here — at least to get consulted.Remember how sim­ply Sujatha explains an art form. Thodu var­mam, padu var­mam, thattu var­mam & noku var­mam — in INDIAN.

 
 Com­ing to crack­ers :).. The slump starts from the Bom­bay cir­cus intro­duc­tion, a pathetic open­ing song [ ringa ringa ]. The love sequences make you rest­less as noth­ing hap­pens there. You nei­ther laugh or inter­ested in the pair. Some­times, you need to won­der where’s the hero­ine in the screen. Nei­ther the chem­istry works out nor the romance. Even then,  they love and go for songs. Surya is very care­ful in romance scenes with her [ it’s like act­ing with sci­ence master’s daugh­ter in school drama :) ] and the cam­era is also care­ful not to get any cheap angles of her. I can’t stop think­ing about those poor fathers of those yester-year hero­ines acted with Kamal [ ஏன் அந்த‌ பொண்ணுங்க‌ளுக்கெல்லாம் அப்பாங்க‌ளே இல்லையா ?!?! ].
 
 Till inter­val, the story doesn’t move at all and hangs almost there [ ex : the ele­phant sequence in Adyar, MGM sequence ].  Then the sec­ond half has some sharp­ness and then looses con­trol towards the cli­max. Cli­max fight is one of the aver­age mar­tial fights wast­ing Peter Hein and also the graph­ics based siru seri fight [ Kodu­mai ]. Surya is very keen not to reveal the orig­i­nal six packs of the Viet­namese actor.. The piti­ful vil­lain comes in a linen shirt and Surya with 16 days train­ing comes in 6 packs. Every fight has to have a lead .. more than the fight that leads needs to grab the atten­tion of the audi­ence [த‌ம்பீ.. கேட்டை மூட்றா ]. Instead, they assem­ble in a dusty field and show their skills stay­ing away at a dis­tance of 50 meters. The songs, their hor­ri­ble place­ments, BGM were so pathetic to an extent that you get an explicit shock why such a music comes in this seri­ous sequence. And the great thoughts of Muru­ga­dos about Tamil, it’s her­itage, our fore­fa­thers — they are placed emo­tion­ally to get applause and noth­ing more. Remem­ber Bod­hid­harma suc­ceeded in China and not in TN talk­ing about Man­jal mag­i­mai or Sidha med­i­cines.
 
 See­ing the flaws, first time I thought of Shankar and ARR. Though I’m not so inclined about Shankar’s work at least he does jus­tice to the hype. Imag­in­ing ARR for this work would have given an ele­vated expe­ri­ence for sure.

 Bod­hid­harma is a Tamil­ian.. ok. Bod­hid­harma is from Tamil­Nadu.. ok.. We are also Tamil­ians.. ok. we are also from Tamil­nadu.. ok.. Surya has 6 packs.. ok. Surya has the same DNA pat­tern [ looks like a saree bor­der design ].. ok. Big bud­get movie.. Har­ris music and Udayanidhi pro­duc­tion. This could have been the story nar­ra­tion of Muru­ga­dos to the team.
 
 On the whole, the movie failed to enter­tain and amuse. The other prob­lem is the regional restric­tion the char­ac­ter Bod­hid­harma has [ Bodhi Dhar­mulu  — Nokku var­maalu ! ]. How­ever, Aamir Khan can once again remake this after chis­el­ing the unwanted ele­ments [ cir­cus, mgm, graph­ics, songs ], some tin­ker­ing work to the script and give the music to ARR. No need to worry about Tamil. We still can por­tray Dhamu as an Indian and can claim he trav­elled via  Mum­bai for 6 months [ See.. how imag­i­na­tive we are  ! ] .  Aamir has one more golden goose on his way.
 

ஏன் ஸார்.. ஹாரிஸ் மியுசிக் மேல‌ இவ்ளோ கோப‌ம் உங்க‌ளுக்கு ?

பின்ன‌ என்ன‌ ஸார்.. சைனீஸ் பாட்டு போடுங்க‌ன்னா.. ட்விங்கிள் ட்விங்கிள் லிட்டில் ஸ்டார் டியுனை இழுத்து இழுத்து பாட்டு போட்டிருக்காரே !

 -Toto.

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