Here is a movie that exceeds your expectations, if your expectations are zero. Expect more and you will certainly be disappointed.
(Suriya, how could you let them do this to you!)
It's incredible how a few well-intentioned men can make such a hash of a movie that could have been worth watching.
Go, just to watch Suriya, Asin, and well choreographed, if very bloody stunts, and you will get your popcorn's worth.
Cast - Suriya, Asin, Nayantara, and sundry villains.
Synopsis - Suriya and Asin fall in love, Asin is killed and Suriya gets hurt trying to save her; He suffers from 'short term memory loss.' Now, hell bent on revenge, he goes about tracking and eliminating those responsible for his lover's death. The movie tells you how.
The best thing about the movie is the jigsaw puzzle style narrative technique used.
The director uses an interesting time-line that forces the viewer to figure out the story for himself. It is slickly done, with the story starting halfway down the line, showing Suriya in revenge killer mode, and moving back and forth, quite effortlessly, giving glimpses of the events that led to him being what he is.
The viewer is never lost, and confusion, if any, is short-lived.
The scriptwriter and director manage to grab viewers' attention, and keep it, till the interval. Once the pieces of the puzzle start to fall in place however, the movie loses its momentum ,and quickly falls flat.
Asin is one of the high-points of the movie. She's slim and beautiful, dresses in a style that suits her (thanks to Chaitanya Rao), moves well enough to give any self-respecting dancer in a music video a run for her money, and plays the cliched part of a struggling actress and social do-gooder with effortless ease and panache.
Suriya is perfect, both as her besotted lover, and the killer on a rampage. I just wish his directors wouldn't ask him to dance. Much as I adore the man, even I have to admit the sight is painful to say the least! God, the things he did to the beautiful song Sutrum Vizhi in the name of dance - sad really.
Nayantara is completely wasted in this movie. She is there to add increasingly tiresome twists to the plot. If something goes wrong, you can be sure the character she plays has a hand in it. She screeches her way through the role, all pretence of acting giving way to loud exaggeration.
She is a pleasant looking woman with a lush body and looks wonderful in Indian clothes. Item numbers in tight midriff baring outfits just put her ample curves on unpleasantly jiggly, larger than life display.
The movie survives on its copying of the English thriller ''Memento.'' The scriptwriter and director seriously lose it once they start adding doses of their 'original' Tamizh-cinema masala.
Everybody knows that Indian movie makers get their inspiration from foreign movies. I just wish they would make faithful copies, so we would get a good product, and originality be damned.
If you want to get your ticket money and popcorn's worth, leave at the interval. Till that time there is suspense, good acting, fun, romance, and everything else you can expect in a big budget commercial film.
If however you want to see this blood-fest through to the end, be prepared for lots of violence, sequences totally devoid of logic, inept, bumbling cops (everybody cheered when a cop said ''this is a 10 digit number; this means it is a mobile phone number'') and not one but two villains imported from Bollywood, smirks, bad accent and all.
Stop trying to make sense of the movie after the interval, stop flinching at yet another stream of blood and saliva splattering the screen, and don't roll your eyes at yet more Matrix-like visual effects. Don't ask how Suriya even remembered he had lost somebody special and how he had tracked down the killers. Don't ask how he had had beautifully scripted tattoos done on his body - the ones carved in ball point ink were less aesthetically pleasing, but definitely more believable. Don't grumble at the slow pace of the movie post-interval, or mutter that you wished you could take a pair of editing scissors to it.
I got a refill of popcorn, parked my brain at the door, and sat back to clap, cheer, whistle and hoot in a very front-bencherish manner, and generally have as good a time as was possible at this disaster. You do that too, and I guarantee you will enjoy the movie.
PS. One last thought - This film is about revenge. Revenge is something that is to be re-lived and savoured after it is got (at least according to popular belief) What use is it to a man who cannot even remember getting it?
