Whos bad................... Review on Raavanan Movie

Am surprised to be writing the first review for Raavanan, the Tamil version of what has been dubbed as the AAG of Mani ratnam.I am also surprised as to how such an excellent movie has got a tremendous amount of negative publicity thanks to the "Movie Critics", and I assume that the hindi version is not drastically different from the tamil version of the movie

Raavanan is a performance and visual powerhouse which is supposedly inspired by Ramayan and each character of the movie being compared to a character in the indian mythological tale. Of course people are given ample opportunities to sit back and say "Aaah this character must be this one from Ramayana since he/she does this or is related to the character thus", doing which Mani has given a bit more for the viewers to do than just watch the movie.

Raavanan is the tale of Veera(played by Vikram) who is introduced as a tribal maverick who is an outlawed poor lover, poor helper, evil destroyer and for some the evil himself. Veera's notoriety calls for a brave and daring police officer to tackle him and possibily bring him down. Enter SP of Police Dev(played by prithivraj) who comes to Veeras' territory along with his wife Raagini(played by aiswharya) to bring an end to his reign. In course of his assignment Dev and his men try attacking veera during his sister's wedding ultimately resulting in his sister's husband running away from the scene, with veera injured in his neck with a bullet hit and his sister being taken away to the police station.

Veera's sister is brutally gang raped by the police men due to which she commits suicide. This gives veera enough reasons to abduct the SP's wife raagini, take her to his core territory i.e. the dense forests and execute her thereby extracting his revenge. What happens forms rest of the story. From the above, if one was to draw references to Ramayana then the following is the list of characters

Vikram> Raavanan

Prithviraj>Ram

Aishwarya> Seetha

Karthik>Hanuman

Priyamani>Soorpanaka

and so on.

Though the story is as simple as above, the non linear script/narration has added excellent strenghth in retaining some sense of suspense ultimately culminating into an excellent climax.

The biggest strength of the movie is definitely the performance. Vikram was made for the role in showing 10 different emotions on his face at once(people may have seen him doing two characters at the same time within the same body in Anniyan/Aparachit). In more ways Vikram fits the role of the tribal robin hoodish character both in his huge physic and ruffian sort of face. One will definitely appreciate the talent this guy has. Viewers down south may already be aware of what a talent prithviraj is. At an age of 27 odd, when other actors of his age are not yet out of college or even school, this guy has suited the role of a hard hitting encounter specialist SP so well, it makes you wonder where this guy would be in few more years. The proof that Aishwarya is an actor is available only if she acts in Mani's movies. Her performances over, Iruvar, Guru and Raavanan have remarkably improved and she delivers an amazing performance as raagini. I must mention though that she looks her age and looks more like a sister to prithviraj, but the two of them share very little screen space, so we hardly notice it. Karthik and Prabhu who were part of Mani's earlier classic, Agni Natchatram, have lived up to their reputation. Priyamani and all other actors have used their opportunities really well in whatever little screenspace they got.

The next hightlight of the movie has to be that of cinematography and music. The visuals will definitely pop the question "Why isnt india seriously promoting its tourism when it has such stunning natural beauty". Each frame shot in the forest/woods, the water fall, the lake and the mountains are breathtaking and made even more visually appealing due to the camera work of Santosh Sivan and Manikandan. Hats of to them. No Mani Movie is complete with ARR's stunning music. Readers of my review will be aware that I do not like songs in Movies and I stick to my opinion about those in this movie too. However few songs that set the mood/ move the story(like kaatu sirukki and usure pogudhe) have only helped the cause of the script and have not hampered the tempo of the movie. The re-recoding/ background score, needless to make a specific mention, are amazing and are vintage ARR.

From how I viewed the movie, it has a very strong message of how backward our tribals still are and how, in few places, they are being exploited by the police/ army. Though a love story or a thriller chase in nature, the message I mentioned is definitely felt throughout the movie.

In all Raavanan definitely fulfills the entertaining needs of an average movie goer and definitely satisfies those die hard mani ratanm fans and for sure will satisfies those movie goers hitting the theatres to see actors really acting. I loved the movie for

1. The power packed performances from the lead three

   
   




2. The stunning and breathtaking visuals

   
   




3. The music

   
   




4. Script

   
   

Go watch the movie, if not in theatres at least on DVDs. If not you are definitely missing a really well made movie from our very own Mani!!!