I was looking forward to Retro so much after the spectacular DoubleX. On paper, it has everything to be great: a writer who knows his craft, a music director who knows exactly what works for the movie, the lead actor producing it, a production house that has backed good works of art, and all the hype was positive until the release. It has been two days since I watched it, and I’m still wondering how the hell did this fantastic bunch of people make such a terrible movie.
Vetrimaran continues his exploration into the worlds of Shakespeare and gangsters. Only this time, he is a far superior filmmaker.
Spoilers Ahead..
“Vada Chennai” is divided into chapters and each one is part of a larger jigsaw puzzle that can perhaps never be solved. The best one is titled “Anbu, Rajan and the Hood”. It tells the story of Rajan (Ameer), his brother Thambi (Daniel Balaji) and underlings Guna (Samuthirakani), Senthil (Kishore), Velu (Pawan) and Pazhani (Boxer Dheena). They are smugglers, working for the powerful politician Muthu (Radha Ravi). In a sudden turn of events, Rajan takes a stand for his people, irking Muthu, who plots his fall using Senthil.
I miss Ranjith, the filmmaker. I know it isn’t fair to compare someone’s previous works with their current one, but I really do miss the filmmaker who put more effort into story telling rather than using the medium to propagate his ideologies. Or maybe I’m not the right target audience for these kind of films. Kaala worked for me in parts but as a whole I felt it needed a little more effort into actually making a “film”.
This review is written after hearing the Kaala Jukebox that starts oddly with a Std Electricals ad.
Having broken the stereotypes of a typical Rajini album in his previous outing, SaNa (Santhosh Narayanan) gave us a musically pleasing Kabali. Will Kaala have ground breaking themes or genre defining tracks or a simple acoustic ballad? The answer is here. The album consists of SaNa’s typical singers, rappers and lyricists, and a new band (dopeadelicz) to create the local sound of Dharavi.
I know what you are thinking. Why? I’ve been asking myself this question ever since I decided to watch the movie. But I still went with it. After all, how will my trip to India be complete without watching a shitty movie in theater, right? And boy did I choose the perfect movie for that. Bairavaa was beyond repairable. How are we supposed to take it seriously after Vijay is compared with Sachin, Dhoni, Ricky ponting and the likes 5 minutes into it? Am I supposed to believe that everyone had a straight face while writing and filming scenes like these?
Jerry Seinfeld once said, in a Seinfeld round table, that he was afraid that the show would lose quality after it became successful and when they had more money to spend. Not many people can handle success and money well and Ranjith definitely doesn’t seem like one of them. There are a lot of people who could be at fault for Kabali to turn out to be such a disappointment. I’m sure Ranjth had a lot of pressure on him while making this movie and the result makes it quite evident that he is definitely not capable of handling those so early in his career. To be honest, I did not have much expectations for this film, or for any films nowadays (mainly because apathy has taken over all my emotions lately). This film had every element in it for it to be a whopping success and a colossal failure and we can all be glad that it fell somewhere in the middle.
Mokkapadam 