Among the two Diwali releases, obviously ‘Kathi’ took the cake along with the cherry when it came to a grand opening, fetching maximum screens for a thunderous release, largely thanks to the successful combo of Vijay and director A.R. Murugadoss. The opening day reports about the movie was good and so decided to watch it (of course, with a grain of salt).
‘Kathi’ alias Kathiresan (Vijay) is a petty criminal who escapes from Kolkata prison and lands in Chennai. He accidentally meets his double, Jeevanantham (Vijay no. 2), who is being targeted by the goons and saves him. Soon Kathiresan switch places with Jeevanantham in order to escape prison term by fleeing from the country. Kathiresan then realizes the do-gooder in Jeevanantham and a social angle in the story kicks in, obviously turning ‘Kathi’ into a super-hero who takes down the evil force all by himself on behalf of Jeevanantham.
To put it straight - I felt really let down with a carelessly written script with an equal dose of weakly developed characters, mainly Neil Nitin Mukesh as the villain, who had ‘Amul Baby’ written all over his face and so his fate gets revealed as soon as he gets introduced. Obviously Vijay movies would be made to stick to a formula, but the success heavily rests on making the entire thing look non-formulaic. That was the missing piece here.
The main problem was the trope of employing a double role for Vijay. I am still clueless about it. One thing that came to my mind was that the backstory was revealed in parts through Kathi (Vijay no.1) with whom we travel throughout the movie. Apart from that there was a subtle character difference which was also not leveraged fully. So why take all the trouble to cast Vijay in a dual role? Also the evil plans of the villain seemed to be too easily unraveled by Kathi, and that even defies the run-of-the-mill ‘formula’ by any yardstick.
Coming back to the social angle - this time the flavour was saving agriculture and promotion of farming. Also a lot of corporate and media bashing were there. But the extent to which the problems were blown out of proportion and the ease with which everything fell in place for the protagonist was least convincing.
Also Samantha was there for some songs and a naive romance. Her role also ended with a what-would-be called an 80s heroine’s role where she is supposed to wait until the hero is released out of jail, no matter how long it takes.
Songs were ok; ‘selfie-pulla’ was double ok. Anirudh’s BGM added some meat and punch during the high-octane show-down scenes between Vijay and Neil Nithin Mukesh.
Overall, the movie is targeted at Vijay fans who would lap up every frame where their star gets to deliver in his own capacity with least botheration towards any logic. How I wish for Vijay to deliver yet another ‘Gilli’ or a ‘Thuppaki’ - I’m waiting!
Verdict: Average
Rating: 2 / 5
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