Rajapattai Movie Review : ராஜசோத்தை (rajasothai)

 

What would prompt a perfectly stable minded person like me to suddenly spend 3 hrs of time and 120 rupees at a local theater ? Well the answer could lie in the story, screenplay , acting , or effects in a movie . But sadly that was not the reason this time . The reason this time was that I was not really in a proper state of mind and had been pretty shaken up from being sick for the past week.

So lets analyse the bad choice I made.

Rajapattai is essentially a commercial pot boiler as you can easily guess from the trailer . I have nothing against that , but still I expect a bit of brain effort from the director and the writer .

The real story :

Your usual corrupt politician is after somebody else’s stuff , Hero comes and saves the day,

The END.

The actual story :

அனல் முருகன் (Anal Murugan ) works as a small time actor in movies and aims to become a Big Villain actor. He encounters Dhakshina moorthi in a temple and saves him from a bunch of goons and learns that the goons were sent by Dhakshina moorthi’s son who is after his father wealth . So being the kind-hearted person he is, Vikram (If you still haven’t guessed who Anal Murugan is.) takes him into his custody and protects him.

Dhakshina moorthi’s son wants to get into politics so He needs to give the land on which his father has built and orphanage to MAMA Party Leader AKKA (Who incidentally is revealed later in the film to have been a pimp in the beginning only to climb up the ladder and become a politician).

Then a whole bunch of stuff happens and some how the real villains in the movie get the land , and as expected AKKA betrays Dhakshina moorthi’s son who now joins vikram and tries to get his father’s land back.

To get the land back they must take out the Big Boss Wapa, and as usual vikram does the job and proves AKKA’s crimes and AKKA is killed . The children get their orphanage back.

In the mean time there is a Romance that brews between Vikram and Deeksha Seth, Nothing special here.

That about wraps it up.

The Acting :

Vikram has really put in the effort to look like the character he plays . This is a really amazing transformation after Deiva Thirumagal , and as usual he impresses with his acting skills even though his character suffers from a bad case of cliché syndrome.

The vetran telugu actor K.Vishwanath really impresses in the scenes where he give romance tips to vikram , but other than that he doesn’t have a lot of scope.

Deeksha Seth is passable as the female lead looks gorgeous and she tries to show bit emotion in the extremely limited scope that she has, as eye candy. Its commendable that she has not fallen into the glamour trap nor has she stood with a blank face all the time like many heroines who I do not want to mention.

Pradeep Rawat as wapa is not really that frightening a villain as he was in Ghajini .

The actress who plays AKKA needs to do some research on Sornakka (ச்வர்ணக்கா ) characters like for example the female villain from DHOOL (Another Vikram film)  , She goes around with the same expression on her face for the entire length of her screen time .

All the other actors do their parts justice .

Other Technicalities:

This a big let down by director Suseenthiran who directed movies like Vennila Kabadi Kuzhu and Naan Mahaan Alla ,  that is all there is to say in the direction department.

Music by Yuvan Shankar Raja is boring , nothing really catchy , I was counting the minutes to the end of each song in the theater .

Camera work by R. Madhi is ok , A few stunts are shot well .

Few other points :

The songs in the film were a big hindrance to the and the song in which vikram reportedly appears in 17 different costumes was a big letdown.

I couldn’t bear sitting through the final “Laddu Laddu Rendu Laddu” which features Reema Sen ( Who seems really out-of-place ) and Shriya Saran ( Who hasn’t changed her dance moves for a long time ) .

Overall :

If you must see this movie , either remove your sense of logic and music, or try getting a case of sudden short-term memory loss .

 


Visiting Delhi with a belly (Delhi belly Movie – review)

I have followed the hype over Delhi Belly for some time now , and let me tell you it fully lives up to its expectation . Delhi belly is by far one of the best risky decisions taken by Aamir Khan.

A day before the film released I learnt that there will be 2 versions of the Movie , the original Hinglish Version and a dubbed Hindi Version . Unfortunately I had already booked the tickets so I hoped that the version I would be watching would be the Hinglish one , but as hopes go I ended up with the dubbed Hindi Version which incidentally has toned down dialogues . But to my Surprise I had under estimated my ability to understand Hindi ,  which has greatly Improved since the Time of  3 Idiots , So  I could actually understand more than 95% of the dialogues spoken.

Delhi Belly is the story of Tashi (Imran Khan) and his room mates Arup (Vir Das )  and Nitin (Kunal Roy kapoor)  , who live in an old apartment . Tashi is engaged to Sonia (Shenaz Treasurywala) . Tashi is a journalist and Nitin is his photographer while Arup is a Cartoonist .

These blokes lead an average life until they get caught up in a mess with a smuggling syndicate lead by [Vijay Razz] .

In the mean time Tashi starts falling in love with a special Correspondent Menaka (Poorna Jagannathan) , while Nitin gets the worst food poisoning of his life by eating tandoori chicken from a road side vendor , and Arup gets dumped by his Girlfriend who plans to get married to an NRI .

What happens next is a series of events which are extremely funny , entertaining , and some thing which is not to be missed . But take this with a grain of Salt because this is not the usual brand of humour that we have come to expect from Bollywood  , The humour in this film is either extremely  brilliant or overly offensive depending on how you look at .

This film comes with a good number of pros , first this is a very new kind of film in the lines of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels , Snatch , and The  Hangover  , secondly this kind of film is very new to Indian Cinema , and Finally No other currently playing film will make you laugh so much .

There comes only one Con with this film , This film is not for Family Audience and children , This film is not for those who get easily offended , this is not those people who have as sense of hypocritical morality , and Most Importantly it’s not for Parents !!

Technically also this film is brilliant Art direction , Editing , Music , all these deserve a special mention .

In the Acting department , the three main roles are played extremely well by the actors getting into the skin of the character  , Shenaz  and Poorna do their part well , and Vijay Razz as the Smuggling Gang leaders is brilliant along with the Guy who Says “(Knocking on a hotel room door )Sir ,Loondrry”.

Dialogues in the film are exceptional which is one of the main reason this movie works .

Director Abhinay Deo and writer Akshat Varma have created a movie which easily connects with its tare get audience and no one else , A film which is does not try to hide its intentions behind cheeky double meaning dialogues , there is generous usage of Expletives from both English and hindi.

On the whole Delhi belly is an amazing 1 hr  30 minute ride ,  which is not spoilt by any unnecessary breaks like an interval or song sequence , and a film which should not be missed if you can stomach it .


The End of the Line……..

Movies are a very powerful medium , A really honest and well worked story can do wonders to the way the audience perceive the world.  The real power of movies can be harnessed only when the story takes the front seat and star power takes the back. One such Film is “The Last Station

The Last station directed by Michael Hoffman is a biopic of the legendary Russian writer Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, during his last days .

Before watching this movie I had never heard of  Tolstoy or of  ” war and peace ” , but this movie totally takes you to Yasnaya Polyana the place where Tolstoy was born is place where the movie takes place during the year 1910.

Now before you read any further about this movie I would like to warn you that this is not your usual commercial melodrama , this is in many ways a really ‘artsy‘ film , and not meant for people who have no patience .

After looking at real life photographs of the characters in the movie , I was amazed at how really good the casting in the movie was . Everybody from Tolstoy’s daughter Sasha  to Vladimir Chertkov to Tolstoy himself looked and acted like their real life counterparts. I was really impressed at the casting of Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy and Paul Giamatti as Vladimir Chertkov.

Moving to the acting department every actor in the movie has performed his/her brilliantly , but i was really impressed with Helen Mirren who plays Tolstoy’s wife Countess Sophia Tolstaya , its a pity that she did not win the Academy award.Now there is no need for me to really say anything about Christopher Plummer , anybody who has seen any of his previous movies knows that he is one of the best performers out there.

Now if that has not yet convinced you to watch this really inspiring and moving film , continue reading….

The Story starts with Valentin Bulgakov played by James McAvoy (who is again in a really meaningful role  after “The last King of Scotland”), going to Yasnaya Polyana and joining as Tolstoy’s secretary, Vladimir Chertkov wants Valentin to know about Sophia Tolstaya’s  actions because she is against Tolstoian Movement and its Principles , and what follows is a melodrama which ends in a very befitting climax.

So go and watch The Last Station immediately if you like really meaningful cinema where the story and screenplay are the real heroes . They just don’t make many films like this anymore .