Tamil Nadu has a strange history of embracing their fond Kollywood heroes as their political leaders mainly because of the sort of charisma that they manage to pull off on screen and playing the underdog’s role to perfection in order to woo the masses. Now that it has become an unwritten rule that an actor who enjoys such a charisma over a certain period of time can aspire to pursue his political dreams! ‘Thalaiva’, directed by A.L.Vijay (ALV) has been made with the intention of having Vijay’s political aspirations firmly tucked up the sleeve! What’s bothering was why it took 3 hours to narrate such a tale that has been time and again used from ‘Nayagan’ days and that too if you have the liberty of lifting off stories from various Tamil movies including Vijay’s own!!
Vishwa (Vijay) leads a cool life in Australia, running his own business and shaking legs with his friends. He meets Meera (Amala Paul), falls in love and they decide to get married. When Meera’s father (Suresh) insists to meet Vishwa’s father (Satyaraj) to get his consent for the marriage, they fly to India and things start getting murkier in Vishwa’s life. As expected, Vishwa takes over the reign by promoting himself up the rank and takes his foes to task almost single handedly.
There was nothing new in the story as it was a mashup of ‘Thevar Magan’, ‘Nayagan’ and ‘Bhagavathi’. Though I did not want to bring in the name of a classy film like ‘Thevar Magan’ while reviewing this movie, I can’t help it because the director has taken the core story from that and has remixed it according to his whims and fancies!!
The director enjoys the reputation of lifting off stories and scenes from so many Hollywood movies in the past, now that this might have been easier for him to execute as he had to lift off from the past Tamil flicks. The topping on this rather cliched and not-so-engaging script was the glory that was mounted on Vijay by each supporting character. Though it was somewhat in check, certain characters were designated to foster Vijay’s political image, leading the brigade would be Y.G.Mahendran!
There were 2 twists in the movie, that was totally unexpected and was sort of a consolation, but still, the script was weak in terms of storyline, dialogue, narrative and editing, almost failing in all the departments.
Vijay’s acting was supposed to be powerful, but I felt he lost the fizz somewhere in the middle and the punch that was felt in his last flick ‘Thuppaki’ went largely missing in this one!!
Amala Paul appeared as the regular upmarket eye-candy, but somewhat managed to get things going in the middle, but after the first half, she was totally forgotten and reminded us that she was still there only towards the climax.
Satyaraj did a calm and composed role of the aged don. But there was nothing special in his performance.
Santhanam, well what to say, rocked the first half; in the second half he did not have much of a leeway to perform!
Abhimanyu Singh, was supposed to be the fearsome villain, but somehow I felt like laughing at him everytime he does meditation quoting Vijay’s name in order to have his revenge :) Really funny!!
Another notable cameo from the newbie Ragini Nandwani, was somewhat refreshing. Though her addition was needless, her emotions appeared to be genuine and her acting was also fine!
Ponvannan, Suresh and others in the supporting role including a cameo from Nasser was below average.
Editing by Anthony was a drag. Though the intention would have been to make it slick, the commercial elements did not allow that sort of a luxury and hence the irony lasted for 3 long hours.
Cinematography by Nirav Shah was awesome, especially the scenes that were shot in Australia.
Music by GV Prakash was average, but the last number ‘Vanganna’ was somewhat impressive and was the pick of the lot!
The movie has been targeted towards Vijay’s fans and strictly adheres to foster his political dreams. ALV has churned out another dampener, after his last ‘Thaandavam’, that would hardly do any good for Vijay’s movie career!
Verdict: Dampener!
Rating: 1.5 / 5
.jpg)